Sustainability tools sprout from Green Gov Challenge

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California hosted its first Green Gov Challenge in which citizen hackers used public data sets to help the state meet its sustainability goals.

California has been working to improve its environmental profile for years, and the latest effort asks citizen hackers to harnesses open data to improve the state’s sustainability operations in the face of the drought.

According to a state announcement, the Government Operations Agency and the Department of General Services created the Green Gov Challenge, which focuses on creating apps, visualizations and other tools in an effort to improve government sustainability practices.

The contest took place over the weekend of Oct. 24-25 at the California Department of General Services. Finishing in first place and receiving $10,000 was Insight, for its Green Buyer app that tracks agencies’ purchases of environmentally friendly products. NudgeSMS took second place, winning $7,500 for its app that reminds workers to conserve energy, while Shiny finished third and received $5,000 for its smartFLEET app that visualizes the energy used by agency vehicles.

articipants were judged on the effective use of data sets from the portal, innovation and creativity, feasibility of interface and user friendliness, usability and interface.

The winning projects have not yet been released, as the teams will spend the next two months discussing and working on their projects before a recognition ceremony in December.

Challenge participants were able to use the pilot CA GreenGov Open Data Portal to leverage publicly available data sources. Data sets in the portal include temperature and geolocation data; ozone/emissions geolocation data; general plan and zoning geolocation data and air pollution geolocation data. Outside data sources were also used.

The judges for the challenge included West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Calbaldon; Amy Tong, chief deputy director for the California Health and Human Services Agency's Office of Systems Integration; and Acting Executive Director for the California Strategic Growth Council Randall Winston.

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