Griffith University students were among the highest achievers at the 2014 GovHack National Awards in Brisbane.
Leading the cohort from the School of Information and Communication Technology was Mick Davies, who recently graduated from the Logan campus and whose project, SocialTest, won first prize for Best Use of Queensland Government Data.
SocialTest is a Web service helping people evaluate postcodes and suburbs in southeast Queensland by providing information such as Centrelink services, property rentals and even crime statistics.
Gold Coast students Jordan Gardiner, Matt Patterson, Jazz Ernest and Jake Sieben were Highly Commended for their project Citycompanion, which uses City of Gold Coast datasets featuring the locations of public barbecues, public showers, bicycle racks, picnic tables and many other services and sites.
This year’s initial GovHack technology challenge was held at Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus in July. Sponsored and supported by City of Gold Coast, it was one of nine GovHack events that ran simultaneously across the country and selected projects from each were then nominated for the national awards.
Lecturer and First Year Coordinator in the School of ICT, Dr Jolon Faichney, attended the awards and commended the Griffith participants, saying: “GovHack is an intense and challenging experience in which teams combine expertise, imagination and innovation to come up with solutions to technical challenges facing government.”
“It says much for the quality of the work we are doing at Griffith that our students should be recognised in these awards. Hopefully it will lead to broader exposure and opportunities.”
Head of School Professor Michael Blumenstein says the GovHack performance is another example of the School and Griffith making strides in the area of App development and applications of Open Data.
Guest of honour at the awards ceremony was the Federal Minister for Communications, The Honourable Malcolm Turnbull MP.