3.6: Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon

Host New York City's first hackathon: Reinvent NYC.gov

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Host New York City's First Hackathon: Reinvent NYC.gov -- In July 2011, the City partnered with General Assembly to host its first official hackathon, welcoming over 100 participants to collaboratively build prototypes that will guide the future development of NYC.gov, the public's primary digital gateway to City government. The event, titled Reinvent NYC.gov, was supported by access to leading technology APIs and City data, and participants generated 14 proposals for the upcoming redesign of NYC.gov. A panel of judges from the public and private sectors, including Meetup's Chief Executive Officer Scott Heiferman, General Assembly's Mimi Chun and TechStars' David Tisch, selected five winners based on innovation, usability, social integration, location technology and ingenuity. The goal of the Reinvent NYC.gov hackathon was to bridge government and technology sectors, kick off the NYC.gov redesign process with transparency and bring fresh eyes and innovation to the challenge of updating the City's website.Winning proposals demonstrated innovative approaches to civic engagement and communication. The five themes consistently demonstrated were search, crowdsourced question & answer platforms, locationbased customization, social media integration and gaming mechanics. Winners were invited to demonstrate their prototypes to Mayor Bloomberg during a breakfast at which the Mayor personally thanked the winners and discussed the future of NYC.gov. The Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon, one of the first of its kind in government, established an effective template for sparking innovation, accelerating development and encouraging greater civic collaboration. The formal redesign process for NYC.gov was initiated in January 2012, when the City released a Request for Proposals to identify a design and front-end development vendor. The results of the Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon will help the City to work with the winning vendor to develop a functional, well-designed user experience of NYC.gov, which is expected to be completed in 2013. In addition to the Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon, DoITT has introduced the NYC Open Data Platform to thousands of developers through presentations at numerous events including hackathons hosted by Spotify, Cleanweb, NYC BigApps, Foursquare, General Assembly and HackNY.

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