MANILA, Philippines – The alleged misuse of the pork barrel, Malampaya fund, and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) are some of the corruption issues hounding the government today. With the right mechanisms for ensuring government transparency and accountability, these could have been avoided.

To help bring the country closer to achieving transparency and accountability particularly in the public sector, the Open Data Philippines Task Force will hold a two-day Hackathon event.

Happening on November 9-10, the Hackathon: #KabantayNgBayan is a timely activity that hopes to bring Filipino IT developers and designers together to find “new ways to increase public awareness and track government spending.”

data.gov.ph

Unknown to many, the government made public a set of rich but unused data through the data.gov.ph website. Hackathon: #KabantayNgBayan aims to maximize the available data from the website by providing a venue for IT developers and designers to use the information.

Participants of the event are welcome to do anything with the available data – “from simple data visualization of government spending to more complex budget crowd-sourcing apps.”

The application should be able to provide citizens useful and innovative ways to tap available government data.

In other countries, open government data initiatives similar to the Hackathon event paved the way for pioneering approaches for analyzing and viewing public data. These led to the creation of applications “empowering the public to make informed decisions and a more efficient and transparent government.”

Rules and prizes 

The event prohibits pre-coding. Attendees are bound by a single rule – to accomplish all coding during the hackathon itself.

The event also allows a maximum of 4 people in a group.  Online registration to the event opened on Monday, October 2.

Aside from being able to participate in good governance, winners of the hackathon event will also be bringing home prizes like Asus laptops and Nokia lumia phones. – Rappler.com