Geoscience Australia is proud to again be sponsoring GovHack in 2017, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to providing open access to government data.

Geoscience Australia is proud to again be sponsoring GovHack in 2017, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to providing open access to government data.

The GovHack competition is a cross-Tasman event that encourages technical innovation using freely-available government data. So it's game on to `hack' Geoscience Australia's Open Data!

"As the national geoscientific agency, we are keen to inspire practical and innovative outcomes with our freely-available geoscientific data," said Geoscience Australia's Chief Information Officer, Antony Stinziani.

"It's particularly exciting when we see entries that think outside the box to find ways to use government data for problem solving issues of national significance, such as keeping our community safe and better ways to sustainably manage our precious water resources."

"To follow this theme of looking for practical solutions to real world problems, the two featured datasets that Geoscience Australia has chosen for GovHack 2017 are Australia's historic earthquakes and groundwater data from across the Great Artesian Basin," Antony explained.

"With a wealth of geoscientific open data available for GovHacker's to access, the only limit is their imagination," Antony said.

"From satellite data to digital elevation models, seafloor bathymetry data and more, all freely available to explore via Geoscience Australia's website and web services," Antony added.

"We can't wait to see what GovHack'ers create with our data."

Geoscience Australia, along with other key government agencies including the Bureau of Meteorology, IP Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, will be sponsoring a range of prizes including the Best Science Hack and a bounty prize yet to be revealed later this week! GovHack entries are encouraged from software developers and web designers from across government, industry, academia and the general public to combine or 'mash' data from multiple government agencies into applications.

Previous winners of Geoscience Australia prizes have made a 3D printed geothermal map of Australia, developed a proof of concept Minecraft map of Canberra, and built an educational app on how the geology of Australia has evolved throughout the Earth's history.

An overview of how to access Geoscience Australia's open access data, and details of our featured datasets can be found online via Geoscience Australia's GovHack webpage. All of Geoscience Australia's datasets are available to explore via Geoscience Australia's Data and Publications Search.

Further information

• Geoscience Australia's 2017 GovHack featured datasets
• Geophysical Archive Data Delivery System
• Geoscience Australia's Data and Publications webpage

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