IEEE Chicago is excited to offer the 2015 hack challenge!  The Land of Lincoln Hackathon is designed to help promote the public data found at the state of Illinois open data portal (https://data.illinois.gov).  The Land of Lincoln Hackathon looks to promote awareness of great resources for the citizens of Illinois and foster innovation from the academic and professional communities.

 

The State of Illinois’’’ Open Data Portal Initiative  is a clearinghouse of various data sets in a standard format that is readable by virtually all computer systems. Development of this portal is aimed at increasing access to public data or the data used in the operations of government, and making it accessible to the citizens of Illinois in a conventional method.   The Open data Portal effort is born from transparency and the hope that we can induce for the first time ever an opportunity for citizen involvement in deriving solutions to some of the problems in government. It is our hope that this foundation will encourage innovative thoughts, ideas and plans in order to generate improvements in government that can be driven through areas such as improved services, identification of economic barriers and much more.

Land of Lincoln Hackathon prizes will be awarded at multiple levels.  K-12, Collegiate, Professional and a special “Women Who Code” award for teams that feature one or more women on their project.

Registration is now open for this month long event and app submittals will be taken from 9/15/2015 to 10/15/2015.  After which, a team of judges will award prizes to be handed out November 2nd at the IEEE Chicago Symposium.

More information can be found at https://ieeechicago.org/hack-challenge.