#VersusVirus Hackathon

Dear friends of open data,

From 3 April to 5 April, over a period of 48 hours, Swiss civil society came together to use their collective intelligence, inspiration and knowledge to come up with concrete solutions to the problems caused by the COVID19 pandemic crisis. The result was «the biggest sharing and caring experience that Switzerland has ever seen»: the #VersusVirus Online Hackathon.

4’500 participants in 263 teams with more than 500 mentors worked on 190 submitted challenges and came up with 279 projects (with the support of over 60 datasets and resources), with 24 members of parliament and Federal Council Alain Berset also joining in the effort.

We at Opendata.ch are proud to have been involved in this exhilarating and inspiring event. Of the 263 teams that submitted their ideas, each and every one made a valuable contribution to this monumental effort and deserves respect and recognition. You can find a comprehensive list of all submitted projects here. Furthermore, you can find an open list of relevant datasets and other resources here.

We would also like to take the opportunity to mention a few projects that we found particularly inspiring:

• pandemia-parliament: It is imperative that Parliaments are able to debate and make decisions during times like these. Yet the Covid-19 pandemic has forced members of parliament to stay home and thus brought the democratic process to a near standstill. Pandemia-parliament is an online space where parliamentary business can be conducted in a safe, transparent fashion, thereby bringing politicians back to work.

• Swissrefucare: Refugees in Switzerland and elsewhere are at a higher risk of getting infected with COVID-19 because they live in small shared spaces and do not always have access to necessary hygienic products. The platform connects refugees with Swiss authorities and with Swiss citizens and thereby aims to help in improving their situation.

• Covidfact: Citizens are overloaded with information related to COVID-19 and they don’t know which data source to rely on and where to find answers. “Covidfact” is a bot using the knowledge of experts to provides 24/7 and up-to-date information on the crisis based on trustworthy facts, guidelines and tips to help people get through this crisis with confidence. 

• Fast2Gov: Software helping Swiss cantons to collect, aggregate and share reports and follow up on every patient in a fast, complete and accurate manner while protecting privacy of patients & healthcare professionals

You can find more dataful results in these blogposts by Oleg.

The corona crisis has shown why openness is important. Our association’s mandate and independent approach – all for one and one for all – remains true. We are supporting open data activities across all hackathons, platforms and confessions. We have a prerogative to be active community partners to e-government. And the #VersusVirus Hackathon has proven that together we can jump on chances to boost discovery of new and alternative open datasets and the open source apps that use them. But there is much more work to do!

Get in touch with us to give us your feedback or contributions. Stay home and stay healthy!Ps. In Case you are not an Opendata.ch member yet, you can change that here.