One day to code for a better Bengaluru

It was a day of tough coding for the hackers of Bengaluru to make something that will impact the city. Hackers used open – source data for devising solutions for the city’s problems this Saturday. Three days ago, the teams were given four data sets consisting of street quality scores, data on implemented projects, data on civic amenities and budgetary data. They were asked to use this data to come up with solutions to Bengaluru’s problems. The All – day hackathon saw participation from 17 teams. The teams code applications based upon the data and created useful user interfaces for both government officials and citizens.

The event was organized by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. The event took place at International Institute of Information Technology on Saturday in Electronic City.

Chandrima P., chairman of the organizing committee said, “It was good to see that teams thought about how to make the technology accessible to citizens. For example, the winning team used WhatsApp to help users get data on BBMP contracts allotted in their neighbourhoods. Their unique selling point was that they designed something which was useful to all citizens, even those who are not tech-savvy.”

The idea of the solutions was to provide citizens easy access to the data. The students worked on presenting data in a less daunting manner. An engineering student at IIIT said, “For instance, data could be visualised using Google maps ward-wise to help people make comparative decisions in an easier manner.” Venkatesh of Janaagraha Centre said, “We plan to give these concepts a more concrete shape in the days to come.”