GovHack 2023 Sponsorship Prospectus

Publish date: 2024-05-03

Welcome

Introduction

GovHack provides government at all levels with the ability to directly engage with a passionate hacker community to find creative and innovative mashups to defined (or not so defined) civic problems using government agency open data.

GovHack is a respected community event, run mostly by volunteers, we have established relationships with government agencies at Federal, State and Local levels across Australia and New Zealand coupled with strong ties to the ANZ developer communities and the technology and communications industries.

Our passionate and creative hackers showcase the potential of open data to help solve the challenges facing government and its citizens.

GovHack is an international competition for people of all abilities who seek to make communities better through open data.

Acknowledgment of Country

GovHack's volunteers and community work all around and on the lands that are now called Australia and New Zealand.

We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and pay our respects to elders past and present across Australia and New Zealand.

Section 1

"a piece of code providing a quick or inelegant solution to a problem"

— Oxford Dictionary

What is GovHack?

GovHack empowers communities all over Australia and New Zealand to experiment and tackle today's big policy and service delivery challenges with data.

We exist to:

We value:

GovHack is an annual 46 hour hackathon, a Festival of Ideas, using open government data to make our communities better places.

We do this by providing access to data and a space to connect with Government and organisations so you can workshop ideas around community challenges and imagine and develop concepts to drive meaningful change.

Across one weekend, thousands come together across Australia and New Zealand to form teams, agree to projects, and participate in what has become one of the world's premier open data competitions.

During the competition, teams create a proof of concept and a video that tells the story of how data can be reused, looking for new ways to solve challenges facing government.

Established in 2009 as a small Canberra-based event to showcase the opportunities of open government data, GovHack has grown into the largest open data hackathon in the Southern Hemisphere.

Section 2

Two woman smiling at camera, both wearing GovHack lanyards

Zaidul Alam

Three people smiling at camera

Alan Yip

What happened in 2022?

A snapshot of our 2022 statistics

525404147
participants completed their 2022 GovHack hackathon submissionparticipants compete for their first time in 2022projects were completed over 46 hours
51105$61k
winning regional, national and international projectsrunner up and honourable mentions
(including multiple mentions)
in prizes awarded

You can see the full statistics of GovHack 2022 throughout our 2022 Year in Review.

Winning Projects from 2022

In 2022, events were again run in every state and territory in Australia as well as New Zealand. In summary, 2022 had:

Award winning projects are described in detail on the GovHack hackerspace, this is our portal for all project challenges and events — including:

You can see all project submissions here.

We saw over 51 winning entries and 105 runner up and honourable mentions across the regional, national and international award categories. A couple of our favourites included:

Section 3

"to program a computer in a clever, virtuosic, and wizardly manner. … hacking is the domain of digital poets. Hacking is a subtle and arguably mystical art, equal parts wit and technical ability …"

— Urban Dictionary

Who comes to GovHack?

There are several types of attendees and stakeholders involved to help teams create a memorable GovHack experience.

Hackers bring a diverse range of skills such as designing, developing, programming, storyboarding, marketing, visualisation, research, human behaviour, history, journalism, analysis, (to name just a few!), to the event to produce and present a 'proof of concept' during the main two days of the event.

To participate, hackers can be school age or retired, a psychologist or a coder, a historian or a journalist, a teacher or a researcher, a government or corporate employee, etc.

Not all hackers are super technical, but they are all creative, passionate and full of ideas.

Hackers can participate in their preferred location, and also digitally, from anywhere within Australia and New Zealand. This allows us to have participants from far reaching places where we don't have a physical presence. Participants can mix with their peers from anywhere across Australia and New Zealand.

Mentors include our Data Mentors who are custodians of government datasets, and our Technology Mentors who are either corporate technology sponsors or government technology experts. Both of these mentors assist teams to access and use the data and technology they need to create their projects.

Observers and VIPs are representatives from many sponsoring organisations, visiting Government Ministers and local MPs, kindred organisations who share the same passions, speakers and other organisations keen to see the GovHack experience.

Local Event Hosts, led by Region Leads, the Event Host, is tasked to keep the event running smoothly. They will be responsible for facilitating their local events to make the weekend a creative success.

GovHack is only possible with the contribution of countless passionate volunteers all across ANZ. Our team of organisers is passionately dedicated to GovHack and they're spread across both countries with many roles from our International Operations Team, Region Leads andtheir Regional teams to keep the local events connected and running smoothly.

Section 4

Auditorium full of GovHack participants

Rifat Mahmud

TeamMoretonBay folks taking fun photo in front of screen

Erica Mealy

2023 Events

This year, GovHack will run several key opportunities for sponsors to engage in.

Sponsor Briefing Session

Early June

This event is will occur in two parts; the first a physical briefing session for Government agencies located in Canberra, and the second a digital briefing session for all sponsors. These briefings are an opportunity for GovHack Directors and the operations teams to introduce sponsors to the concept of GovHack, to provide an update for the year ahead, and to assist sponsors to understand how they can best engage with the event.

The briefing sessions include a Q&A session and workshops on challenge development, provision of data, and sponsorship opportunities.

Digital Conference

Early August

This will consist of a series of sessions over a one week period, hosting several technical conversations, data owner presentations and messages from our sponsors.

This provides sponsoring organisations the unique opportunity to showcase and discuss their datasets, their technology, etc to interested hackers across Australia and New Zealand.

It will also give novice hackers an opportunity to participate in or view recorded sessions at their leisure on topics such as pitch presentation, time management and decoding data.

This is a terrific way for hackers to gain a greater understanding and awareness of your selected datasets, allowing them to interact directly with your data experts.

Connection Events

June, July, August

These events give an opportunity for sponsors, mentors, and hackers to meet prior to the competition. Find out more about the hackathon, what kind of interesting datasets will be featured during the weekend and potentially hear some tidbits about the challenges.

Regional sponsors will have the opportunity to highlight key areas of interest during this event. This is a terrific way for hackers to gain a greater understanding and awareness of your selected datasets, allowing them to interact directly with your data experts. Hackers will also have an opportunity to meet other hackers and can potentially form teams prior to the competition.

Competition Weekend Events

18 — 20 August

The GovHack Competition Event is a two-day hack event held simultaneously around Australia and New Zealand, over a 46 hour period to create concepts, mashups and models with open government data, to examine the challenges facing government and communities in new and innovative ways.

At the end of the weekend teams submit their project including a project video, their open data story and project page for sponsors to judge.

Event Timeline — Local Timezone

Region Award Events

Late September — Early October

The GovHack Regions Awards take place during September/October after the GovHack competition weekend and after region level judging has been completed by all the region-level sponsors.

Region Sponsors will present the very best projects from their GovHack Region Competition with their awards. And teams can showcase their winning projects to all attendees.

Aotearoa New Zealand Awards Events

Early October

The GovHack Aotearoa New Zealand Awards take place during October after the GovHack competition weekend and after New Zealand judging has been completed by all the sponsors.

New Zealand Sponsors will present the very best projects from the GovHack Competition with their awards. And teams can showcase their winning projects to all attendees.

International Red Carpet Awards Event

Mid October

The GovHack International Red Carpet Awards event is the pinnacle night that showcases and celebrates the creativity and ingenuity of ANZ's most talented teams.

Projects from across Australia and New Zealand that entered the international and national competitions will have been judged and the finalists and winners selected.

The International Red Carpet Awards event has been held in a different Australian city each year, in 2016 it was in Adelaide, South Australia; in 2017 it was Brisbane, Queensland; in 2018 was in Sydney, New South Wales; in 2019 was in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory; and in 2022 was in Melbourne, Victoria.

The 2023 Red Carpet Awards event will be held approx eight-to-ten weeks after the GovHack Competition Weekend and will showcase the outcomes and winners from the GovHack international and national competition entries.

Selected GovHack finalists from across ANZ receive a Golden Ticket which includes flights, accommodation and their ticket to this final event in the GovHack calendar.

Executives and representatives from International, National and host State Sponsors, Federal and State Ministers and representatives, and key host city organisations and VIPs are all invited to attend the Red Carpet Awards event, to meet the finalist teams, see the products of their weekends labour and sponsors will present the award to their winning team(s).

This is a showcase event in the international innovation calendar, providing an opportunity to mix with senior public officials, national finalists and volunteers.

The Red Carpet Awards will be held in October, and intentionally it will be a physical event, will it be in your City?

Section 5

GovHack medals

Niki Fernando

The Themes of 2023

This year there are three (3) key themes, these reflect the key strategic areas that both government and organisations can manage their Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals.
How can open data contribute to addressing ESG goals in our post-pandemic ways of working?. In addition to these 3 key themes, sponsors can also select your own topic of interest that is relevant or particular to your organisation.

Environment

Technologies and enabling services are assisting our primary producers to understand the land and all its resources to make better decisions. How industries are contributing to climate change, managing biodiversity, resource utilisation and maintaining water security is the focus for this theme.

Social

In the post-pandemic world, reshaping the health and wellbeing of the community has emerged as a new challenge for organisations and communities. As the workplace arrangement changed, the way we interact with people has been redefined and influenced by technology due to increasing remote work habits. The challenges in this category will focus on mental health issues, skills development, citizen privacy and data security, STEM education and community engagement.

Governance

Because of more digitally available services, more citizen data is now captured and maintained by organisations. This raises a number of challenges in establishing and maintaining public trust, privacy and security of personal data and developing data governance policy.

Section 6

The Competition

GovHack is essentially one competition, but there are 3 levels of participation for hackers and sponsors, International, National and each of the Australian Regions (States & Territories).

Your challenge will draw entries from participants in these levels, depending on the level of sponsorship you select.

To explain further,

As a Challenge Sponsor, your task will be to create one or more challenge(s) / problem statement(s) for one of the levels above aligned to one of our themes, or a particular topic of your interest.

Sponsors will be provided with a template, examples of successful challenges and our Competition team will be available to guide and assist you.

Section 7

Northern Territory participants celebrating

Rifat Mahmud

People celebrating playing Trivia

Zaidul Alam

Featured Datasets

As a sponsor and custodian of open datasets, you can submit a dataset(s) which will be featured to competitors. Multiple datasets from multiple sources can be used in entries.

By featuring your dataset, your data will rise to the top. As a sponsor you can shine some light on your data and encourage use in the competition by submitting featured datasets.

The dataset(s) featured must be in line with our open data principles and at a minimum must be:

You can check out the featured datasets from the 2022 competition on the 2022 Hackerspace.

Section 9

Person looking and working on a laptop

Stuart Ralston

Group working around a table of laptops

Stuart Ralston

International Sponsorship Packages

Major International and National sponsorship provides participants across Australia and New Zealand an immersive experience, including the opportunity to attend the New Zealand National Awards event and the International Red Carpet Awards event.

Each country brings together all finalists to celebrate their creativity and ingenuity, and sponsors get to present the winning entries across both countries with their awards.

This means your sponsorship will reach a substantial audience and provide more opportunities to connect with even more talent.

For the full summary of benefits for each package visit govhack.org/sponsor-bd-23.

The Lead Corporate International Sponsor is an exclusive one-only sponsorship for a non-Government organisation who is specifically interested in the Australian and New Zealand markets and in attracting teams from both Australia and New Zealand.

This package is available only via negotiation and is an exclusive opportunity for those organisations who are deeply involved and committed to the art of innovation, increasing digital skills development in ANZ, the benefits of open data collaboration and the critical thinking talent involved in ideation and problem solving.

This package include the option of hosting the sponsor briefing session at a location of your choice where you can meet and interact with fellow sponsors and the GovHack operations team.

If you are interested in hosting the Red Carpet Awards in your Region and City, you will be afforded prime positioning at all levels of this celebratory, showcase event.

You will have the most prominent level of sponsorship at this event, be able to invite and host your VIPs, notaries, State and Local Government representatives, etc. for up to 20 of your guests. Your organisation will be a significant proponent of open data/technology and will provide the opening speech at the event and present the awards to your challenge winners and finalists.

Your organisation will be on-show as the co-host of the event and all promotional opportunities are afforded to you.

As an International Award Sponsor, you will be specifically interested in a challenge that is of common interest across both Australia and New Zealand and will attract teams from both Australia and New Zealand.

You will be involved in the art of innovation, increasing digital skills development in ANZ, the benefits of open data collaboration and the critical thinking talent involved in ideation and problem solving.

Your International challenge will be presented at the International Red Carpet Awards in Australia.

Section 10

Australian National Sponsorship Packages

Australian National sponsorship provides participants across Australia an immersive experience, including the opportunity to attend the national awards.

We bring together all finalists to celebrate their outstanding projects, and sponsors will present the winning entries with their National awards.

This means your sponsorship will reach a substantial audience and provide more opportunities to connect with even more talent.

For the full summary of benefits for each package visit govhack.org/sponsor-bd-23.

This sponsorship opportunity is open to any Government or non-Government organisation who wants to be profiled in the National competition, with hackers from your country are able to choose your challenge.

These sponsorships may be related to one of the key themes, or they may also be relative to a completely different focus area.

You will be likewise be interested in the art of innovation, digital skills development in ANZ and the critical thinking talent involved in ideation and problem solving.

Section 11

Australian Region Sponsorship Packages

Region sponsorship helps to provide all participants in your state or territory with an immersive experience, including the opportunity to attend the online Digital Conference, Connections and Region Awards events, with a distinct focus on region-wide prizes and exposure.

Each Australian state and territory will have its own Region Awards Event which brings together all finalists in the region to celebrate their creativity and ingenuity, and where sponsors present the winning teams with their awards.

This means your sponsorship will reach a substantial audience and provide more opportunities to connect with even more region-based talent.

Your sponsorship will also directly assist selected National Competition finalists in your region. Selected finalists will represent their region and team, they will be flown interstate and provided with accommodation for the GovHack International Red Carpet Awards to be held intentionally in October 2023.

For the full summary of benefits for each package visit govhack.org/sponsor-bd-23.

Additional options are available to be purchased to add to your package, e.g. additional region challenges, opportunity to speak at the digital conference, etc.

These sponsors will be specifically interested in the development of their Region and developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem and will be a keen enthusiast of the national agenda of government open data.

These organisations will have a particular interest in a particular Region and a potential focus on a single GovHack Event/location.

You may be a Government or non-Government organisation within a Region with a specific Region focus and have an interest in furthering the Regions entrepreneurial ecosystem, the value of government open data, digital skills development and community benefit.

These sponsors will have a particular interest in at least one Official GovHack event, (e.g. GovHack Brisbane, GovHack Melbourne). They will have a greater presence at the official event of their choosing and is designed to directly support your community to participate in GovHack.

Local Government, regional offices of large corporates and small to medium sized businesses often provide these levels of sponsorship as it demonstrates support for your local community.

These sponsors will have a particular interest in at least one Official GovHack event, (e.g. GovHack Brisbane, GovHack Darwin). They will have a greater presence at the official event of their choosing and is designed to directly support your community to participate in GovHack.

Local Government, regional offices of large corporates and small to medium sized businesses often provide these levels of sponsorship as it demonstrates support for your local community.

Event Partners will gain significant exposure by hosting and financing all aspects of their preferred local event, this includes in-kind provision of, or full financial support for, the local official event venue, all event catering, internet access costs, etc.

Event Partners can also contribute financially if they wish to also be a Challenge Sponsor for their Region. This is done by spoonsoring at a secondary level. The percentage that is allocated to award winners will be 60% of the sponsorship value as opposed to 40% where an event partnership is also taken.

Venue Partners will gain exposure by hosting and financing all aspects of their preferred local event, this includes in-kind provision of, or full financial support for, the local official event venue, including internet access costs.

Catering Partners will gain exposure by hosting and financing all aspects of their preferred local event, this includes in-kind provision of, or full financial support for, the local official event catering.

Section 12

Aotearoa New Zealand Sponsorship Packages

Aotearoa New Zealand National sponsorship provides participants across New Zealand an immersive experience, including the opportunity to attend the national awards.

We bring together all finalists to celebrate their outstanding projects, and sponsors will present the winning entries with their National awards.

This means your sponsorship will reach a substantial audience and provide more opportunities to connect with even more talent.

For the full summary of benefits for each package visit govhack.org/sponsor-bd-23.

Additional options are available to be purchased to add to your package, e.g. additional region challenges, opportunity to speak at the digital conference, etc.

These sponsors will be specifically interested in the development of their New Zealand and developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem and will be a keen enthusiast of the national agenda of government open data.

These organisations will have a particular interest in a particular New Zealand and a potential focus on a single GovHack Event/location.

You may be a Government or non-Government organisation within New Zealand with a specific area focus and have an interest in furthering the areas entrepreneurial ecosystem, the value of government open data, digital skills development and community benefit.

These sponsors will have a particular interest in at least one Official GovHack event, (e.g. GovHack Wellington, GovHack Auckland). They will have a greater presence at the official event of their choosing and is designed to directly support your community to participate in GovHack.

Local Government, regional offices of large corporates and small to medium sized businesses often provide these levels of sponsorship as it demonstrates support for your local community.

These sponsors will have a particular interest in at least one Official GovHack event, (e.g. GovHack Wellington, GovHack Auckland). They will have a greater presence at the official event of their choosing and is designed to directly support your community to participate in GovHack.

Local Government, regional offices of large corporates and small to medium sized businesses often provide these levels of sponsorship as it demonstrates support for your local community.

Event Partners will gain significant exposure by hosting and financing all aspects of their preferred local event, this includes in-kind provision of, or full financial support for, the local official event venue, all event catering, internet access costs, etc.

Event Partners can also contribute financially if they wish to also be a Challenge Sponsor for their Region. This is done by spoonsoring at a secondary level. The percentage that is allocated to award winners will be 60% of the sponsorship value as opposed to 40% where an event partnership is also taken.

Venue Partners will gain exposure by hosting and financing all aspects of their preferred local event, this includes in-kind provision of, or full financial support for, the local official event venue, including internet access costs.

Catering Partners will gain exposure by hosting and financing all aspects of their preferred local event, this includes in-kind provision of, or full financial support for, the local official event catering.

Section 13

Prize Pool Allocation

Sponsors funding is divided between a total prize pool of 40% and 60% is allocated for operational costs. Operational costs include any catering and venue hire costs, wifi, and other event costs. They also contributes to many compliance and logistics costs including interstate/international transport and accommodation for Red Carpet Awards finalists and the necessary resources, management, and infrastructure for a nation of hackers and volunteers.

Prize pools for negotiated sponsorships are agreed separately and included in the sponsorship agreement.

Our focus is to ensure we provide a fully inclusive, fully funded free attendance at the local, state/territory and national events by covering all costs for everyone, as well as providing cash awards to winning teams.

For the full summary of benefits for each package visit govhack.org/sponsor-bd-23.

Having winning and finalist teams attend the prestigious GovHack International Red Carpet Awards and represent their state/territory and country is the pinnacle of the GovHack experience for teams.

This is only made possible through the ongoing contribution and support of our innovative and outstanding sponsors and supporters.

A single sponsors prize pool will be allocated between a winning team and a number of runner ups for each sponsored challenge. Typically the winning team will receive $1,000—$2,000 (depending on total prize pool available) and the remaining pool will be distributed between the runner ups. The pool can be redistributed in cases of dual winners.

Section 14

Package Viewer

Detailed Breakdown

For a detailed breakdown of the different sponsorship options and benefits, head to the following:

Section 16

Contact and Terms

Sponsorship terms and conditions can be found here.

Contact our GovHack Sponsor team, Jan Bryson / Sue-Ellen Shaw, at sponsors@govhack.org for more information.

You can also contact one of the below region emails to speak to our Region Leads in your region.

Section 17

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