Invitation to Participate in the Camden Open Data Challenge

When: 23 March 2017, 5.30pm – 8.00pm
Where: 5 Pancras Square, London N1C 4AG
Who: Open data enthusiasts, civic-minded coders, community activists

RVSP: Registration is open via Eventbrite.

Camden Council’s open data portal, Open Data Camden, launched in 2015 and there are now nearly 300 datasets on Open Data Camden from parking bays to planning applications, housing stock and road accidents. We think this data has the potential to greatly benefit our local community. We have the data and know a bit about what our customers want but we don’t necessarily have the tech skills to make it happen. So we want to work with local residents and the developer community to use open data to solve problems, generate insight and ultimately to help the residents of Camden to make better decisions in the everyday life.

We’re kicking off the Camden Open Data Challenge with a meet-up on 23 March. The objective of the challenge is to build a website or app using our open data to benefit the residents of Camden.

We have some ideas which we think have potential:

  • Schools waiting list – help parents keep track of where their child is on the waiting list for Camden schools
  • Council housing data – help prospective council tenants understand how the bidding process for council housing works through data
  • My local area – help residents keep up to date with activity such as planning, parking, licencing and streetworks in their neighbourhood

But we are very open to other ideas and we’ll do our very best to source the data for you if it’s not already on the site. Check out our data catalogue here.

The first session will be hosted by Councillor Theo Blackwell, the Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance, Technology and Growth and leading advocate of open data in local government. We’ll introduce our open data programme, agree the challenge(s) and who’s going to do what. We’ll then meet up again a few weeks later to check on progress. We hope this will be the start of something longer term – an informal network of civic coders collaborating with the Council to get the most out of the wealth of open data we’re releasing.

In true hackathon style, there’ll be pizza and beer and (modest) prizes for the best apps.