Hackday Moers: Open data, artificial intelligence and much more

“Hackday Moers began with a small nucleus of people who wanted to do something with IT, and it has since grown into an interregional event,” said Stephan Bernoth, director of the Digitalization Department in the city of Moers. During his opening remarks at the podium, he could see “many familiar faces from the community.” Yet first-timers and young people also attended the event to take advantage of its diverse mix of presentations, discussions and workshops.

Organized by the city of Moers and the association Code for Niederrhein, Hackday Moers is free of charge for participants. It is also supported by the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Data for Society project.  

Sarah Fischer of the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s re:frame Tech project kicked things off. Her presentation was titled “Nothing but IT? AI skills in public administration.” In her remarks, Fisher explained how AI and algorithms can support public administrators in doing their jobs and how they can be used to focus more on the common good.

What expertise should public administrators have? Which tasks can AI take care of or simplify? “AI is not purely a technical topic,” Fisher said. “A wide range of skills are required, including interpersonal, technological, communicative, organizational and operational.” She gave a number of practical examples: In the city of Soest, AI helps identify and evaluate road damage. In the district of Steinfurt, an AI-driven app helps allocate daycare places. And in other cities, chatbots provide assistance to local residents.

Luis Moßburger from the agency byte spoke about the plans he and his team have to establish open data across Bavaria – and how they counter typical objections about the lack of know-how and resources. Thomas Tursics from GovData explored a topic that many municipalities are currently dealing with: making high-value datasets openly available, something which will become mandatory for many public administrators as of this June and which was already addressed at one of the Open Data Network Meetings. Finally, Mario Wiedemann gave a short talk on the Open Data Barcamp, which is organized by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and Difu, the German Institute of Urban Affairs. He also invited the Hackday participants to attend the third barcamp being held on April 17 in Frankfurt.

On Saturday afternoon, the program continued with workshops. Participants could choose from a range of topics, such as developing apps with Swift Playgrounds, or gaining insights using open data or linked open data, to name just a few of the sessions on offer.

On Saturday afternoon and Sunday, the association Code for Niederrhein invited young people in particular to tinker with their own electronics projects or learn more about using cutting plotters and 3D printers. The agenda included other topics as well, from programming games to hacking in its various guises.

This was the last Hackday Moers before the event’s next major milestone. Since one Hackday had to be cancelled during the pandemic, next year’s gathering will be the 10^th event in the series. Anyone interested in participating can already save the date: April 4–5, 2025.