In the US, the government data driven app contest is in its heyday: Apps for Democracy, Apps for America, Apps for Healthy Kids and many more are challenging the software community to use their skills for the greater good, and demonstrate new uses for technology in the process.
Up north, the BC provincial government is bringing the apps contest model to Canadian soil for the first time on a challenge that affects everybody: climate change. The contest is called Apps 4 Climate Action. The BC government has organized over 500 sets of data from local, provincial and federal governments related to climate change. We are happy to be partnering with sponsors like SAP who have collectively offered over $40,000 in prizes for the best web and mobile apps that integrate at least one piece of provincial data. Each partner brings expertise in different areas such as reporting, data management or usability. We are excited that SAP is offering their reporting and analysis tools for free to developers to create Apps 4 Climate Action and making their developers available for help and support through forums and webinars. Click here for more info.
If you’re a Canadian developer who cares about climate change, and you can think you can put together an app that inspires people to take climate action and reduce carbon pollution, we’d love you to get involved.
The key deadline: apps must be submitted towww.apps4climateaction.gov.bc.ca by July 15, 2010. So there’s time to come up with your idea and create something that you think will make a difference. Cash and bragging rights will be yours if your app is a winner. The IP rights remain yours too, though the BC Government asks that the winners grant it the right to use and promote the app for a year following the award.
Read about the prize details here and the rules here. If you have any questions at all, you can get in touch with us at a4ca [at] gov [dot] bc [dot] ca. We’re also on Twitter at @a4ca and on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/Apps4ClimateAction
But wait, there’s more...
One of the goals of the contest is to open up a discussion between government and the development community about using public data to encourage economic development and innovative approaches to solving public challenges. To that end, the Apps 4 Climate Action team is hosting a series of webinars that will hopefully make us as the provincial government better at delivering data, and you as developers better at turning it into something amazing.
Here’s the schedule:
- Webinar 1, May 11th, hosted by the Province of BC The Climate Data Catalogue—what’s in it, how it works, and how we can make it better.
- Webinar 2: May 25th, hosted by SAP Canada Inc.
- Webinar 3: June 8th, hosted by Microsoft Canada Inc.
- Webinar 4: June 22nd, hosted by Analytic Design Group Inc.
Click here to send a registration e-mail for the May 11th webinar.
More webinars are planned, stay tuned for registration details!
We’re really excited about the possibilities of this project. Thanks in advance for your advice, efforts and ideas for helping Canadians take climate action.
Colleen Sparks
Director of Carbon Neutral Government
Climate Action Secretariat
Province of British Columbia
David Hume
Executive Director, Citizen Engagement
Ministry of Citizens' Services
Province of British Columbia
