The Hacknime.to project, which we co-organize with the Ministry of Investment, Regional Development, and Informatization of the Slovak Republic, once again attracted many people to streamline public administration processes. In the premises of our Campus Cowork, 10 teams brainstormed solutions during April 12th and 13th for the hackathon theme “Registers of Cultural Entities”. The three winning teams also received a financial reward, totaling €6,000. Teams composed of experienced IT professionals and young talents worked on ways in which the Ministry of Culture could consistently identify and record all legal entities operating in the cultural and creative industries, and subsequently take actions aimed at the entire sector. The solution created at the hackathon, funded by the Slovak Republic’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, aims to help the Ministry, and later other institutions, make decisions based on quality data and analysis.
In the end, the event really highlighted how crucial the quality and handling of data are in cracking a particular challenge. “During the hackathon, it was shown that teams that focused on thorough analysis, engaged with mentors, and asked the most questions were able to provide the greatest added value to the topic owner, the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic. The weekend hackathon is proof that analytics can be the most important part for competitive teams and can become a bigger advantage than the proposed technical solution or selected technology alone. This leads to a lesson for future hackathons, encouraging participants to focus on the need for analytical thinking when assembling teams and to include people who can listen to the customer, besides IT specialists,” added Peter Senko, Director-General of the Section for Project Management and IT at the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, when announcing the winning team.
Quality analysis brought implementable solutions
The winning team Sofity proposed a platform that utilizes AI and offers automated management and updating of registers. It can recognize data from PDF files and automatically fill in a subject’s form based on them. The platform’s functionalities include proposals for the structure of registers based on descriptions; including subjects in registers or mapping data during imports. The team also took home a prize of €3,000. “We appreciate that the task itself was detailed and analytically elaborated. Throughout the process of devising the solution, we closely collaborated with mentors who provided us with substantive answers, enabling us to devise a functional solution. I believe that our experience from previous hackathons helped us win. We are pleased with the victory and plan to participate in other hackathons,” evaluated team captain Tetiana Zatykian after receiving the prize.
For Team Argon, which took second place, hackathons are nothing new. Team captain Michaela Vavrová has been involved in solving hackathon challenges for the fifth time. Team Argon presented a system that ensures easy creation of registers through two systems: a website for the public and an application for the ministry itself. The website allows the public to register through their own profiles and create a register from available templates. Registers are categorized, differentiated by numbers for specific registers, and tagged for easy filtering. In the application, it is then possible to filter the categories to which it is needed to send information and directly send it, as well. “We don’t go to the hackathons aiming to win. Our goal is to make the most of these two days, as we see them as an opportunity to learn something new. We have the opportunity to talk to business experts, mentors, and also competitive teams, whose experiences push us further,” Michaela added regarding the course of hackathons.
The third place was taken by the team named K3, which during the hackathon proposed a system called “All you need is 1“. The system is based on open-source solutions with minimal redundancy, aiming to make employees’ work as easy as possible. “This was our first hackathon, and we were delighted and surprised by our immediate success. We extend our thanks to the mentors and organizers for their willingness to answer all our questions and support us throughout the event,” said Filip Kerák.
Hackathons are moving to regions again !
However, the Hacknime.to project is far from over with the seventh hackathon. Another 10 hackathons are planned, with the nearest one heading to Banská Bystrica. From May 10th to 11th, teams will seek ways to digitize the work of offices in the Banská Bystrica Municipality.
Teams of two to five composed of IT specialists and digitization experts will seek solutions to the challenge “Design a document management system (DMS) for creating, managing, and tracking the lifecycle of documents while respecting processes and laws in the Banska Bystrica region“. Registration for the hackathon through a registration form is now available on the Hacknime.to project website.
