Hacking the Government: why we still need hackathons after more than 10 years

by Florin Hasler, Managing Director

For most people, hackathons are nothing new any more. At Opendata.ch, we have been organising data-driven hackathons for over 12 years. (Depending on whom you ask, we were the first in Switzerland, or at least the second 😉). Our concept has always been the same: interdisciplinary teams build data-based prototypes in a good 30 hours to tackle societal challenges collaboratively. In this way, we want to promote the use of data as well as open, public-interest innovation in various fields. Topics come and go, some stay: mobility (2012), politics (2015), law (since 2021), media (2021/22), GLAM/cultural heritage (since 2015), energy (since 2019), agriculture (since 2020), public administration (2023/24),…

Our hackathons are like (stakeholder) round tables. But instead of talking (yet again) about theoretical solutions to complex problems (👀 data spaces), we simply get started. Together. With public administration. With business. With civil society. For me, hackathons are the antithesis of “someone ought to” and “that will never work”.

Of course it is great when many sustainable, impactful projects emerge from a hackathon (👀 Prototype Fund). For me, however, the greatest added value lies in learning to collaborate across hierarchies and organisational boundaries (breaking down the notorious silos) and in establishing a culture of openness in and between organisations. The journey is the destination. Because in case you haven’t noticed: the old recipes no longer work for new, ever more complex crises and problems. We need more cooperation. More openness. More mistakes. Because Elon Musk or the next hype technology won’t pull it off on their own.

In this context, I am very pleased that Jürg and the Federal Chancellery’s DTI placed their trust in us a good year and a half ago and organised the GovTech Hackathon together with us. Last year on the topic of APIs (application programming interfaces). This year on the topic of “Connected Switzerland“. Over 300 people – about half of them from the federal administration – developed 30 prototypes: from an app for effective deployment planning in missing-person searches to forecasting snow reserves (and thus electricity reserves) above Swiss dams. The atmosphere and feedback were overwhelming. For me, it was very enriching to witness the enthusiasm with which the participants developed solutions together and presented them to a high-calibre jury, which in turn was deeply impressed.

Of course, not everything runs smoothly with innovation and digitalisation in the Swiss administration. But pointing the finger at Bern is too easy: in how many corporations does it really work? (👀 Google and its one and a half successful products; although by now they deliberately don’t even manage that any more). And in my view, the administration is a large corporation with an additional layer of complexity and constraints. Instead of shouting “someone ought to” and “haha, yet another failed IT project”, we want to support the administration on its path to becoming more open, more human-centred and more innovative.

Next year the GovTech Hackathon will take a break. We are currently making sure that the projects that are needed and whose teams want to continue keep going. And many other topics. If you have questions or feedback, or want to organise a hackathon yourself, I look forward to hearing from you. Because a good hackathon needs good partners.