Chennai: The first Hackathon orgnaised by the Commisionerate of Municipal Administration (CMA) that was held over the weekend at the Anna University here witnessed participation from 172 technology professionals, including 60 students from the Anna University. The participants came together to build web and mobile applications to help improve lives of citizens in municipalities as part of the chief minister’s Vision 2023 project.
The event that was held in coordination with the global technology consultancy ThoughtWorks focused on creating and developing 25 sofware applications to help citizens in areas such as sanitation, civic services, education, health, birth and death registration etc. “Participants designed and shared ideas based on actual data collected from 135 municipalities in the state for the event,” CMA officials said.
As a precursor to the event, interested participants were asked to list down their ideas in a dedicated website accessible to public and were also provided with information on the data sets available with the state government to work on their project ideas.
The novel initiative received active participation from public who pitched in over 30 different ideas spanning a wide range of issues concerning the public from tracking down rainwater stagnation in various localities to a pet menace tracker, an application that allows user to feed in data on the number and location of street dogs in their neighbourhood, to a car pool software with provides real time car pooling options available in various locations.
At end of the event, the applications developed during this period were judged for their basic idea, usabliltiy and creativity, technology, design and efficiency and quality. “We intend to implement the applications developed at the event to improve urban governance by boosting engagement between its employees and citizens with real time updates and reporting of day to day issues,” a CMA official said.
