After the success in Prešov, the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic decided to organize the next hackathon, the sixth in a row, financed by the Plan of Recovery and Resilience of the Slovak Republic, outside of Bratislava. IT professionals, but also high school and university students who are experienced in programming, designing applications or modern technologies, will gather this time from November 10 to 11 in Trenčín.
The city expects that during the hackathon called “Building a city with a clear investment system”, the talented two- to five-member teams will help make the management of city investments more efficient and propose how Trenčín could improve its internal system for all investment actions in the city thanks to technology. The prize money of 3,000, 2,000, and 1,000 euros will be awarded to the winning teams.
MIRRI SR approached other ministries, central state administration bodies, cities and municipalities to suggest how technological advances and talented IT experts or students from Slovak schools could help them. “We very much welcomed the ministry’s call for hackathons. They have a broad scope and zero funding is needed from us, so they give us the ability to innovate with minimal risk. Already in the preparatory phase, we see a very responsible approach of MIRRI SR to the entire project and maximum help with preparation. I believe that the topic proposed by my colleagues will interest the professional public, but also IT enthusiasts, and they will come up with solutions for us that will help our team in the daily work and subsequently improve things directly for the residents of the city of Trenčín,” said Patrik Žák, deputy mayor of the city of Trenčín.
Topic of the hackathon and expected results
The task for the competing hackers will be to propose the digitization process of the implementation of investment actions in the city and their management through a unified system solution. The municipality requires that the proposed solutions cover all the necessary processes related to investment actions – in particular to adequately notify users in the already created systems of the City of Trenčín and to have the possibility of integration with other information systems of the city.
Today, employees of the Municipal Office manage processes in a shared Excel spreadsheet, while supporting investment documents are stored in several places. Modern solutions proposed by the competition teams should be able to work with the latest version of each document. The aim of this event is to ensure acceleration of legislative and internal processes in the implementation of the investment actions, eliminate unnecessary administration, and the minimization of errors. An important aspect is also the possibility to make a selected overview of investment actions available to the public.
The Trenčín’s hackathon “Building a city with a clear system of investments” co-organized with Campus Cowork will be held on November 10-11, 2023 in the renovated Cultural and Creative Center HVIEZDA. Teams can participate in the event completely free of charge, the organizers support them with stable and fast Wi-Fi, as well as drinks and refreshments in the form of hot food or snacks.
MIRRI SR will be in contact with the winners even after the end of the hackathon, so that they can together implement selected solutions into practice. Hacknime.to hackathons do not end with this event, and it is even possible that they will return to Trenčín at some point: “We have one more topic in mind for the next rounds of the MIRRI hackathons, but I won’t specify it in more detail so that someone doesn’t steal the idea. I can only reveal that it would improve the accessibility of the history of Slovak cities to the public in various parts of the country and make the work of tens to hundreds of people much easier,” said the deputy mayor of Trenčín, Patrik Žák.
