One more year, the Aporta Initiative launches the Aporta Challenge, a competition aimed at promoting the creation of solutions based on public sector information, which help solve challenges in specific sectors that affect society as a whole. This time, the chosen sector is education.

A teaching model based on data and disruptive technologies

The current context of a global pandemic has marked a before and after in the education sector. Although there has been talk for years about the benefits of incorporating new technologies in the teaching-learning process, in what has come to be called Edtech, this trend has become even more necessary in the new post-COVID-19 educational ecosystem.

Edtech refers to all kinds of digital or technological innovations that aim to improve education. This will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector and promote more universal access to knowledge. A field where open data has great potential, as the European Union clearly states. Open data can serve as the basis for solutions that drive automated and personalized online processes based on disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, while promoting greater effectiveness and inclusion, and helping to meet sustainable development goals.

Under the conviction that digital technology enriches learning in a wide variety of ways and offers new opportunities, the European Commission itself launched the Digital Education Action Plan. Among other issues, said plan highlights the importance of promoting innovation in the sector by holding hackathons aimed at developing solutions that respond to the main challenges in education.

Challenges to solve in the Challenge Aporta 2020

In this context, the new edition of the Aporta Challenge is being developed, which seeks original ideas and prototypes that provide new opportunities to capture, analyze and use data intelligence in the development of solutions in the educational field. These solutions can be aimed at solving challenges such as the following:

• Encourage more effective teaching and improve students' experience in the learning process from home or the classroom. Address the growing need for personalized education and identify mechanisms that contribute to responding to the evaluation of learning in non-face-to-face digital environments.
• Promote the dissemination of teaching-learning experiences among the educational community.
• Accelerate the development of skills in teaching professionals to ensure that students learn more and better, in addition to reinforcing the learning of skills related to data analysis and emerging technologies.
• Make learning more attractive and help solve behavior or inattention problems of students.
• Facilitate student tutoring and improve decision-making.
• Respond to Internet security and / or data privacy problems.
• Improve the efficiency and effectiveness in the management of students, educational resources, institutions, etc.
• Introduce students to STEM fields and encourage their training in these subjects.
• Devise solutions aimed at reinforcing the prestige and social recognition of the teaching function.

How does the Aporta 2020 Challenge work?

The Aporta Challenge is developed in 2 phases:

Phase I: Ideas competition

Participants must present an original idea, developed specifically for this contest, and that responds to the proposed theme. The ideas and prototypes that are presented must use at least one data source generated by the Public Administrations, whether national or international. Additionally, its use can be combined with data sets exposed by other sources, public or private.

The ideas presented will be evaluated by the jury based on 5 criteria:

• Relevance
• Quality and overall clarity of the proposed idea
• Impact on the improvement of the educational system of the proposed idea
• Sources of utility
• Promotion of the quality of life of vulnerable groups

The 10 ideas with the highest score will go to phase 2.

Phase II: Prototype development and face-to-face exhibition

The authors of the 10 selected ideas will develop a prototype associated with the proposed idea. From the moment they communicate their pass to phase 2, participants will have a minimum period of 3 months to develop the prototype. A functional exemplification or simulation is sought that allows some interaction, a visualization or a multimedia solution that allows the proposal to be exemplified in a tangible prototype.

The three best prototypes will be selected according to the assessment of the established criteria:

• Easy to use
• Technical quality of the prototype
• Viability

What do the winning teams get?

The three selected prototypes will receive the following financial award:

• First classified: € 4,000
• Second place: € 3,000
• Third place: € 2,000

What do I have to do to participate?

The Aporta Challenge is aimed at individuals and legal entities from the European Union, who can participate individually or in teams.

Those interested in participating must submit their idea through this form at the Red.es website before November 18 at 1:00 p.m.

To present the idea, it is necessary to have an electronic certificate, so it is recommended not to rush the established deadline. Our support team will be at your disposal for any questions that may arise in the email desafio_aporta@datos.gob.es.

More information in the bases of the Challenge Aporta 2020.

If you want to contribute to getting this information to others, we offer you materials that will make it easier for you:

• Promotional materials
• Promotional video

The Junta de Castilla y León, through its Ministry of Transparency, Territorial Planning and Foreign Action, organizes, for yet another year, its open data contest. This is the fourth edition, after the appointments of 2013, 2014 and 2018, in which more than 100 projects were presented in total.

The purpose of the contest is to promote the use of the data published in the Castilla y León open data catalog, through the recognition of projects already carried out and the promotion of new ideas.

4 categories available

To the traditional categories of "Ideas", "Products and Services" and "Didactic Resources", this year adds a novelty: the award for "Data Journalism". Each of these categories is detailed below:

• Ideas Category: Reward projects that describe an original idea to create studies, services, websites or applications for mobile devices. The idea must be unpublished and not have been previously awarded.

• Products and services category: Real projects are sought that provide studies, services, websites or applications for mobile devices, and which are accessible to all citizens via the web through a URL.

• Teaching Resources Category: This award is aimed at creating new and innovative open teaching resources (published under Creative Commons licenses) to support classroom teaching.  

• Category Data journalism: The novelty of this year. It seeks to reward journalistic pieces (written or audiovisual) published in a printed or digital media, including blogs. The works must have been published in the 12 months prior to the call and have not been awarded previously.

In all categories it is necessary that the project -or idea- presented uses at least one data source published in the Open Data Portal of the Junta de Castilla y León. It should be noted that the resource can be exploited using the data analysis portal. These data sets may be combined with others available from other sources, whether public or private, and at local, regional, national or international level.

All applications will be evaluated by a jury, based on criteria such as utility, originality and quality.

What does the prize consist of?

In each category there will be a first and second general prize, and one aimed at students enrolled in university or non-university education, provided it is official. In the case of minors, a teacher from the center to which they belong will be responsible for the project submitted as a candidate.

The award will consist of a financial award and advice on open data. The total amount will be 10,500 euros, which will be distributed among the winners in the 4 categories as follows:

1. Category Ideas  

• First prize € 1,500.

• Second prize € 500.

2. Category Products and services  

• First prize € 2,500.

• Second prize € 1,500.

• Student award: € 1,500.

3. Category Didactic resource. 

• First prize € 1,000.

4. Category Data journalism  

• First prize € 1,500.

• Second prize € 500.

What should I do to participate?

The deadline for submitting applications will be open from July 31 to September 30, 2020.

Applications for participation can be submitted both in person and electronically.

You can see the regulatory bases of the contest at this link.

For the eighth consecutive year, NASA organizes Space Apps, an international hackathon, where participating teams will have to solve real challenges related to Earth observation.

What does it consist of?

Programmers, scientists, storytellers, designers, and anyone interested in space science and data exploration can share their knowledge to design innovative solutions that respond to issues related to different categories:

• Earth's oceans
• Our moon
• Planets near and far
• To the stars
• Living in our world
• Invent ypour own challenge

To respond to these challenges, participants will have to use free and open data sets available in the NASA open data portal.

The solutions to the challenges can be technological, scientific or even artistic: from designing a low-cost method to provide internet connection in remote areas or improving NASA's predictive models, to creating a game that allows customizing stars and planets or devising mechanisms that help to better communicate the rising sea levels.

When and where?

The hackathon is celebrated on the weekend of October 18-20 in different cities that will receive the participants simultaneously. In the case of Spain, the events will take place in Alicante, Almería, Burgos, Madrid, Murcia, Salamanca, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza. However, citizens can still hack virtually from just about anywhere on planet Earth.

Although citizens can participate independently, it is recommended to be part of a team.

Why participate?

In 2018, more than 18.000 people from 75 countries and 200 cities around the world participated in the Space App.

The advantages of participating in a hackathon are multiple. On the one hand, it allows expanding the experience in a specific area, improving creativity and promoting the acquisition of new technical skills. On the other hand, having to work in -often multidisciplinary- teams helps to develop some of the so-called soft skills, such as organization or effective communication.

If you are interested in participating in the Space App 2019, you can register through the following link.

The city councils of Barcelona and the Japanese city of Kobe have launched a new edition of the World Data Viz Challenge 2019 Barcelona-Kobe, a data analysis and visualization contest. This contest was born last year, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the twinning agreement of both cities. The large number of participants and the quality of the works presented, which can be consulted here, have led the organizers to promote this new call.

What does it consist of?

The contest is held in parallel in the cities of Barcelona and Kobe. In both cities, participants will have to analyze data and generate visualizations in order to improve specific aspects of the city. In the case of Barcelona, ​​participants will have to use at least one data set from the Open Data BCN portal. Visualizations can be presented in the form of infographics, charts, interactive maps, etc.

Although visualizations of any theme related to the city are accepted, this year works related to the climatic emergency will receive special attention. In this way, the World Data Viz Challenge 2019 Barcelona-Kobe aligns with the Climate Plan, which integrates all the lines of action that the Barcelona City Council carries out in relation to this matter.

Who can participate?

Anyone who has the skills and abilities to work with open data, analyse and visualize them.

Participants can submit their projects individually or in teams, which should be made up of a maximum of three people.

How can you participate?

The deadline for submitting the projects ends October 31, 2019. Candidates must be submitted through this participation form.

How are the winners selected?

A jury formed by professionals specialized in data analysis and information technologies will review the works presented and will elect 6 finalists, whose name will be known on November 11, 2019. In parallel, another 6 finalists will also be selected in the city of Kobe.

All of them, among other benefits, will be awarded with a 3-DAY CONGRESS PAS ticket in addition to being able to present their work on November 19 in the framework of the Smart City Expo World Congress that will be held in Barcelona between 19 and 21.

For more information, you can check the participation conditions here.

Based on the idea that “the future reusers are, nowadays, in schools”, the Barcelona City Council organizes, once again, the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge, a contest with a high social impact whose main objective is to bring open data benefits closer to students and thus increase the number of people with open data knowledge and skills, taking advantage of all the benefits that entails. And it is aimed at the youngest citizens, from very soon.

What does it consist of?

The Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge Third edition 2020 is a contest where students will have to develop real analysis and / or interpretation projects, using data sets from the Open Data BCN portal. It is intended that students apply their critical vision to suggest improvements that affect the city and the lives of its inhabitants, while discovering the potential of open data.

In addition to the Barcelona City Council, other organism that participate in the organization of the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge are: the Consorci d'Educació de Barcelona, ​​the Center for Specific Pedagogical Resources for Support to the Innovation and Educational Research (CESIRE) and Barcelona Activa S.A.

Who can participate?

The contest is aimed, mainly, at students from the 3rd and 4th grades of the E.S.O., and students from formative courses, prioritizing public funding centres. Participation takes place through their teachers, without restrictions by the subject they teach.

Teachers who wish can take part in a volunteer training program. There are currently 12 centers enrolled in this course, which includes training on general open data concepts, the Open Data BCN portal and tools for the treatment of data.

What is the deadline for submitting projects?

The deadline for submitting applications will open on February 17 and close on April 17, 2020.

Each centre will participate with only one project which will be evaluated by the jury of experts in the field. This jury will select a maximum of 10 projects from all the proposals received.

The students of the selected centers will have to defend their project before the jury in a final act that will be held on May 7, 2020, where the 3 finalists will be chosen.

Are you looking for inspiration? Discover the finalist projects of the 2 previous editions

The previous editions of the Barcelona Dades obertes Challenge were a success. 14 educational centers participated, more than 40 teachers and about 500 students who demonstrated their ability to acquire new knowledge and the educational opportunities offered by open data, presenting all projects of high quality and interest.

The first year, the winner was the Institut Ferran Tallada, with a work titled "Social cohesion goes by neighborhoods" that analyze social cohesion indexes (ICS) to measure and compare the city inequalities by districts. You can watch the video summary here.

The second year, the Institut Vila de Gràcia won the main award, thanks to the project “Gentrification in the neighborhoods in Barcelona”. This project showed the process of urban transformation caused by the phenomenon of gentrification, using datasets such as the number of inhabitants who leave their neighborhoods or the rent variation in € / m2. The projects of the EAT Institut Lluïsa Cura and the Institut Joan Brossa won a deserved second and third prize. You can watch the video summary here.

How can I participate?

The registration period is not yet open although the rules will be published shortly and then the call. From Barcelona City Council and datos.gob.es we will inform you of all the news that may arise.

You can follow all the information about the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge on twitter under the #OpenDataBCN hashtag.

A new edition of the Aporta Challenge is already underway. As the previous edition, new ideas and prototypes based on open data are sought to help improve the efficiency of a specific sector. In this case, the agri-food, forestry and rural sector have been chosen, due to its fundamental role in the creation of wealth and employment.

Why is the agri-food, forestry and rural sector important?

Currently, this sector is facing a series of challenges that affect all us and, ultimately, the future of humanity, such as climate change, food security, population growth or depopulation in rural areas. Generating a higher amount of food to support the whole population, in a safe way and respectful with the environment, looking for alternatives to the concentration of population into urban areas, driving the development of rural environment, as well as protecting and preserving the forests for future generations, are demanding and urgent tasks.

To these global problems, we must add the specific challenges of Spain. Depopulation, aging, desertification, digital divide, masculinization, deficit and dispersion of services ... are some of the concepts that usually come to mind when we think about the rural environment in our country.

A paradigm shift is necessary to face these challenges.

How can open data help to improve this situation?

The digital transformation can help to change the bases of agri-food operations, promoting the rural environment, in many different ways; for example, through the smart agriculture that combines technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence with public and private data management, to maximize crop yields, increase productivity and improve their sustainability. In this context, open data has a fundamental role.

What is Aporta Challenge 2019?

Aporta Challenge seeks to promote talent, technical competence and creativity in the reuse of open data, with the aim of devising solutions that help promote improvements in the agri-food, forestry and rural sector.

The ideas and prototypes presented must use at least one source of open data generated by Public Administrations, whether national or international, and published under an open license. These data sets may be combined with others from various sources, both public or private, and national or international.

The contest will be developed in 2 phases:

• Phase I: Ideas competition. Participants must provide a detailed description of an original idea that can be used to create or enrich a service, study, web or mobile application, which leads to improvements for the agri-food, forestry and rural sector. All the ideas will be evaluated according to criteria such as: their innovative character, their economic and social impact, and their contribution to improving the life quality of young people and women, two fundamental groups for the sector survival. After the evaluation process, the 10 best ideas will be selected and their authors will go to Phase II.
• Phase II: Prototype development and face-to-face exposition. During Phase II, the authors of the 10 selected ideas will elaborate a prototype that may consist of simulations, visualizations, videos or multimedia solutions. The 3 best prototypes will be selected according to criteria such as ease-of-use or technical quality.

During the following months, dissemination and follow-up will be carried out.

Who can participate?

The Aporta Challenge is aimed at individuals and legal entities of the European Union.

Those interested in participating must register in this form.

What are the prizes?

The three best prototypes presented will opt for three monetary prizes according to the following amounts:

•     First prize: € 4,000
•     Second prize: € 3,000
•     Third prize: € 2,000

More information in the Challenge Aporta section and the Competitions Rules.

The government of the Canary Islands has initiated a project to address public policies on reconciliation and co-responsibility based on open data. Under the title of Open Data Canary Women, the objective is to raise awareness and improve gender equality, promoting the balance of work, family and leisure time, as well as the equitable distribution of public and private responsibilities between men and women.

This project consists of three actions:

1. Expedition:

The first phase, which took place in January 2019, consisted of a participatory event that brought together different profiles (both professionals and experts in the field and citizens interested in the subject) to explore and analyze the available data.

2. Visualization challenge:

The objective of this phase is to create a visualization based on open data that reflects a reality or problem for women equality, related to conciliation and co-responsibility. The visualization must include at least one dataset published by a public institution of the Canary Islands (Government of the Canary Islands, Istac, Cabildos, Town Councils, etc.). It should be noted that the submitted works must be under Creative Commons BY license.

​ Those who wish to participate must form groups of 3 to 5 people, where at least 50% of the participants are residents of the Canary Islands. It is not necessary to be an expert in data, because there will be free training related to data reuse and visualization and mentoring programs for participants who need it.

To participate it is necessary to register through the following form. The deadline for presentation of the visualizations is March 19. On March 21, the creators of each visualization will defend their work in front of a jury made up of experts. There will be simultaneous presentations in Tenerife and Gran Canaria.

3. Virtual exhibition:

The three best works will be exposed in the project Virtual Exhibition, a website that will serve to make public all the work done. In this way, they seek to bring the most relevant data to everyone who wants to consult them.

An increasing number of administrations are driving open data and its reuse through contests and hackathons. An example is Malaga City, which has just presented its I Open Data Reuse Contest.

The Data Portal of Malaga City has more than 1,800 available resources, grouped into 800 data sets, which follow the NTI classification. All of them have been published under a free use license, so that any citizen can analyse, reuse and redistribute data to generate a higher economic and social value.

With the aim of enhancing its use and boosting the generation of applications and value-added services, the city council has announced this contest, which has 4 categories:

• Best application for mobile devices
• Best web application
• Best chatbot
• Best analysis of historical data

This contest is one of the actions that the City Council is going to carry out in the framework of the II Open Administration Week, which will take place from March 11 to 17, 2019. The open Administration Week seeks to bring Public Administrations closer to the citizenship.

The call is open to any natural or legal person - except public administrations and those who have participated directly or indirectly in the call -. You only need a project that responds to any of the previous categories and meet the following requirements:

1. The project must be original, that is, not submitted to any other contest.
2. In addition, you must use at least one of the 800 data sets published in the Open Data Portal of Malaga City. The data set could be combined with other open or private data sources.

To help participants, a list has been created on YouTube with videos of interest. These videos show how to obtain information through an API or how to perform an analysis with Carto or Powerpivot.

Those interested in participating can submit their proposal until March 4, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. through this online form.

The winners will receive a cash prize of 500 euros per category. In addition, they will see how their work is promoted in the different official channels of the Malaga City Council and in the next DataBeers event, which will be held on March 27 during the GreenCities 2019 conference.

For more information, you can read the contest rules here.

Promote the use of open data in the European Union to generate new ideas, products and innovative services. That is the objective of EU Datathon, which this year celebrates its third edition, organized by the Publications Office and the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The competition offers participants the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in data-related issues and show their ideas to the world. To do this, they will have to develop applications - web or mobile -, visualizations and insights that combine at least one data set produced by the EU institutions, agencies and bodies with other sources of public or private data.

There are 3 different categories, one horizontal challenge and two thematic challenges:

• Challenge 1: 'Innovative ideas through open data'. Participants should develop innovative ideas using open data from the EU. Specifically, they must use at least one data set from the EU Open Data Portal, and combine it with other open or not data sources.
• Challenge 2: 'New insights in economics and finance'. Participants will have to develop a new insight, business model or business concept through open data. To do this, they must work with at least one dataset from the European Central Bank, the European Commission's Directorate-General for Budget, the European Commission's Directorate-General for Economic and Finance, the European Investment Bank, the European Investment Fund or Eurostat, and combine it with other open or private data sources.
• Challenge 3: 'Tackling climate change'. Participants will have to develop a new business concept or business model to fight against climate change using open data. To do this, they will have to combine at least one dataset in the domain of climate change and environment from the EU Open Data Portal, with any other source (for example, the FAO or the European Environment Agency).

Those interested in participating have to register their project using this online form, before March 24, 2019.

Then, the evaluation process begins, which will consist of two phases: preselection and final selection.

• Pre-selection: an independent experts jury will evaluate the projects description,  and select a maximum of 4 teams for each category, based on its relevance to digital transformation in Europe and the potential of the proposed solution, among other factors.
• Final selection: The preselected teams will be invited to develop their application or visualization in almost two months. Then, they will have to present their proyect during the final conference, which will take place on June 13 in Brussels. In addition to its relevance, the applications will be evaluated against some criteria such as solutions scalability or its interoperability to other data sources.

As a prize, € 25,000 will be allocated for each challenge, which will be split in the following order:

• First prize:  EUR 15,000
• Second prize: EUR 7,000
• Third prize: EUR 3,000

For all those interested, the organizers have prepared a series of webinars, to detail the bases of the contest and show some data sources that can be used.

If you have an idea, do not hesitate to participate!