In our efforts to make governments more open and transparant, we’ve co-organized HackdeOverheid. For one day, we let journalists, public servants, designers and developers team up to see what happens. Within 12 hours, almost more than a dozen hacks have been built. Throughout the day, there were two tracks that visitors could participate in, ‘data-driven-journalism’ was the main theme of the event.

The first track concerned ‘political’ data and the way government data can be used. Richard Pope (UK) of the Rewired State, had an interesting talk about why governments should make data accessible for citizens. According to Pope, apps should always be ‘relevant, actionable and generative’.

The second track of day they was about the way government services can be improved and the role that data could have in this field. Ton Zijlstra, who has been working with governments for a very long time, was moderating this track. One of the topics that was discussed, was the founding of data.overheid.nl, a future platform for open government data of The Netherlands.

At the end of the day prizes have been awarded to the best projects of the day. Tikker, a future application where you can see what is being said about politicians on different social networks, won the third prize. Second prize went to They Promised, an app that you can use to keep track of the promises politicians have made. The winner of the HackdeOverheid was Toevallig of Niet, a platform that lets user see relations between persons using different databases and the API of LinkedIN. The last project will be supported by the Stimuleringsfonds voor de Pers and us to develop it further.

To see the full list of submitted projects, you can check out the website of HackdeOverheid. At the moment, we’re working on a new brand identity of the annual event, so stay tuned.