The Ministry for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Tuesday launched a nationwide hackathon ‘OpenGovDataHack’ to support and showcase potential ideas/talent from inner India.

As part of the start-up eco-system development programme, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) have collaborated to conduct the hackathon at Jaipur, Chennai, Noida, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Hyderabad and Surat.

The hackathon aims to enable participants develop their ideas into apps/infographics primarily by the use of open government data around the themes of drinking water and sanitation, transport, education, health, and crime to a stage, after which it can be evaluated by a jury and be selected for prizes and support/funding.

“The government is committed to make best use of big data in establishing rule of precision governance. While doing so, every care would be taken to ensure that strict privacy rights of individuals are protected,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics and IT.

However, unauthorised use of data would be dealt with an iron-hand to ensure that nothing comes in the way of making data analytics a national movement, he said.

Workshops will be organised variously for sensitisation, identifying problem statements and data gathering across the country in which students, start-ups, academics, and industry can participate.

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