GovHack prize for Indigenous tracking app
A high-tech approach to presenting important Indigenous issues has won a national award as part of GovHack 2015.
GovHack 2015 brought together programmers and enthusiasts at 22 locations across Australian and New Zealand.
They were given access to a mass of publicly available government information and told to come up with interesting and engaging concepts for it, like websites and applications.
A project called #oncountry was among the winners.
It is an interactive online map of national Indigenous stories, which took out the prize for best Indigenous project.
“We used a mash of about six or seven government data sets to create a geolocation-based app,” said Leona D'Vaz, one of five hackers behind #oncountry, told ABC reporters.
“Wherever anyone is in Australia, they can go onto the platform and find out the languages spoken, have access to art sites, culture and history.
“Lots of interesting different facts about Aboriginal culture right in the palm of their hand.”
"We all wanted to hear more positive Indigenous news stories and stories that people could reach out to and learn about," she said.
Now that the competition is over, the teams are allowed to shop their projects to interested parties.
Reports say #oncountry has already received interest from government departments.