NSW Hackathon

Are you ready for a Challenge, and to have some fun?

NSW Government is on a journey to digitally transform for the benefit of its Citizens.

The Challenge is sponsored by the Minister for Customer Service, the Hon. Victor Dominello :

“Governments have to be brave enough, humble enough, and caring enough to ask for feedback in a way that is intuitive and easy – then act on this feedback to improve services” EngageNSW Hackathon – ServiceNow is running a hackathon on 29th October in partnership with The Minister and the Department of Customer Service for NSW to seek ideas on how to engage better with government.

It will take place at:

Fishburners, level 2, 11 York St, Sydney from 7:30am

The Hackathon will be for the full day followed by refreshments in the evening.

Read more here and register now – https://buff.ly/31Iaf0L

NSW Hackathon  – The Brief

The brief is simple;

Create innovative new ways for Government to engage with the community and deliver a better citizen experience:

• How can NSW Government give all members of the community a genuine opportunity to “have their say” at scale?
• How do we close the loop, continuously, with those that consume government services, to make sure customers can participate and have a voice in how government services are delivered?
• Government wants to get a better read on what is working and what is not. How can we provide better visibility and tracking of what the key issues are that citizens are facing?
• They also want to be able to reflect what has been heard from customers back to the community more broadly. How can government deliver that kind of experience and show they are listening?

Issues to address

• huge variety in the most appropriate and effective way to engage with different community segments
• the need to get views on issues in a customer context (as opposed to filling in forms and submitting feedback relating to specific topics of interest to government)
• cost-effectiveness, accessibility, usability
• ability to reuse previous community feedback and build on it for each engagement

Engaging with citizens is something every government wants to get better at, so coming up with a great idea and building a solution could be the start of something much bigger.

The Hackathon will use the ServiceNow platform for all development work. We will provide an instance of the software for each team on the day. Teams that have a broad mix of participants (eg from government, industry and education) and include members with problem-solving skills, creative skills as well as the ServiceNow platform technical skills are likely to make the most progress on the day.

Getting Started

1. Register for the event and create or join a team of ideally around 4-8 people
2. Make sure you understand the problem we are trying to solve. Read some of the background articles
3. Attend the Information Session at 5:30 pm on Wednesday 16/10/19
4. Learn about the ServiceNow platform and how to develop innovative solutions using its powerful capabilities
5. Start thinking about solutions! Check out the judging criteria to make sure you are in for a chance of winning one of our prizes.
6. Check out the FAQ’s if you need help

Registering for the Event

1. If you have not previously taken part in a ServiceNow hackathon, you will need to register to use the site.
2. Once you have done this, you will still need to join a team to take part in the EngageNSW Hackathon. You can either create a team and invite others to join, or else you can join a team that has already been created. If you create a team, you will also need to join that team.
3. If you don’t know what other teams there are or who is in them, you can always go solo for now and then either join a team later or try to recruit some more hackers, hustlers or hipsters for your team.
4. Teams that have a broad mix of participants (eg from government, industry and education) and include members with problem solving skills, creative skills as well as the ServiceNow platform technical skills are likely to make the most progress on the day.

Understanding the Problem

Engaging with citizens is something every government wants to get better at, so coming up with a great idea and building a solution could be the start of something much bigger.

There are plenty of places you can do research on the challenges of  engaging with citizens, but here are some ideas to get you  started :

• 10 lessons on citizen engagement from the World Economic Forum
• what they are doing in Taiwan with the “gov-zero” movement
• Some general background in designing for digital democracy and
• this article by Amelia Loye in the Mandarin 

Information Session

We will run an information sharing session on October 16th at 5:30 – 7 pm. Come over to the ServiceNow offices to have a few refreshments, meet your teams and get an introduction to the challenge. We will present on the topics that will help you get a head start in preparing for the Hackathon, such as :

• Digital Democracy – engaging citizens in a digital world
• Designing with people in mind
• Overview of the ServiceNow platform, including Q&A
• Setting yourself up for success – doing the homework and preparing for the big day

We will send out invites to everyone who is registered on a team nearer the time.

FAQ’s

1. How do I Register? Go to the EngageNSW event website and enter your details
2. How do I create or join a team? Once you have registered, you can either create or join a team, or go solo. If you work for a government department, get together with some of your colleagues. If you know of a ServiceNow partner that works with your department, how about contacting them to see if they have any resources who would like to volunteer to join your team so that you have some technical resources. And let us know if you would be interested in having any students join your team. We would like to help some students to get some experience of working in teams on solving real problems on the platform.
3. Where is it? Fishburners, Sydney Startup Hub, above Wynyard station in Sydney CBD
4. What’s the agenda for the day? 7:30 am for coffee and snacks, 8 am start, Challenge overview by the Minister at 9 am, work, coffee, work, lunch, coffee, work, tea, work, talk to moderators, pitch if requested, approx. 5 pm get prizes if winner, then relax and have fun for networking and refreshments. Head home when done.
5. Is there food? – yes, you won’t go hungry or thirsty
6. What do I need to bring? – laptop and power chord. We will provide wifi.
7. Judging criteria? Address the challenge. In addition, the judges will be looking for

• • Creativity & Ambition – How innovative, creative, different, or stand out is the application or solution?
  • Look & Feel, Quality, Ease of Adoption – If this was a new application launched, how easy would it be to use, how hard would it be to learn for the end user?
  • Impact to people – What change or effect would this have to the user and to the government?
  • Power of the Platform. Innovation – How did the team best utilize the features, Plugins, Share, etc.?
  • Business Value – Is this viable? Does it solve a real problem?