A chatbot to ask the municipality
Buddy Krefeld wins Open.NRW hack
On 3 September, the Open Data Portal of the German Region North Rhine-Westphalia organised their second hackathon to explore what can be done with their data. This year's theme was "UpDATA your life" and set out the challenge to find means how Open Data can be used to make life easier in North Rhine-Westphalia. Over 80 programmers, developers and other Open Data enthusiasts took on this challenge and worked during the whole day to find and explore innovative applications using the available data.
At the end of the day, ideas were gathered and presented after which an election was held to identify the most innovative proposal. The winners of the day were Theo Steinhardt and Michael Tjupalow with their application "Buddy Krefeld". This idea consisted of a chatbot to which citizens can ask various questions related to the administrative processes in municipal administrations, for example on which form to fill in for what service. A potentially time saving idea as it does no longer require a civil servant to answer the questions and would offer users real time responses to their queries. The second prize was awarded to the team behind the application "Mobilitysharing" which helps people finding car or bikesharing deals quickly. The third prize was for "GOTO.nrw" which gives advice for citizens moving within the region.
Want to know more about the results of this hackathon, Open Data developments in North Rhine-Westphalia or explore their data yourself? You can find all information and data by following the link below.
