Local creatives sought for digital competition

RETURNING: Richard Collins [far left], Donald Gordon, Simon Kiellberg and Steven Johnson were some of the 27 'hackers' competing in GovHack 2015.

Registrations have opened for this year's GovHack in Whanganui.

GovHack is a 48-hour Australasia-wide competition where people participate as teams or individuals to come up with creative ways to use and present publicly available data on digital platforms such as websites and apps.

Whanganui hosted a GovHack event for the first time last year.

This year film and education company Double Farley Creative Partners will host the Whanganui event which will be held on July 29-31.

Kevin Double of Double Farley said anyone could participate in GovHack and having a wide range of people with different skills would be beneficial.

Mr Double said hosting the event tied in what the collaborative culture Double Farley was trying to create at its Watt St premises.

"We're quite keen to promote that sort of tech and other ways of thinking, so it aligns with that," he said. "The more that people say Whanganui is a smart city, then all you need is an enabler such as an event like this.

"We've just got to take away the barriers."

Whanganui teams had success on an international level last year with the River Hacktivists team named runners-up in the international disaster-mitigation category at the awards night in Sydney. They developed a smartphone app which could match up those who could offer help with those that needed it during disaster recovery.

Another Wanganui team, Foodrate Wanganui was a national finalist for developing a website which allowed people to search a database of eateries to get council health rating and customer reviews.

"It's really quite exciting to see what comes out of it," Mr Double said.

-To register for GovHack www.govhack.org. People can come up with teams now or be put into teams on the weekend.