Open Data Challenge 2018 concludes in Uzbekistan

An award ceremony marking the completion of the Open Data Challenge 2018, a digital information competition organized by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan (PCUz) in co-operation with the Ministry for Development of Information Technology and Information of the Republic of Uzbekistan, took place today in Tashkent.

The competition, the fourth of its kind in Uzbekistan, consisted of several events held over the course of four days. It opened with a conference on the importance of open data for the socio-economic development of countries, which familiarized participants with international practices in the field. The conference was followed by a so-called ‘hackaton’ on 1 and 2 December; a multi-day workshop in which teams competed to develop the winning concept for a public, socially significant and innovative application based on data publically available through the Open Data Portal of Uzbekistan. The Open Data Portal is an OSCE-supported portal providing citizens with all means of publically available government data in order to bridge the gap between the state and its citizens and to increase transparency. Today’s ceremony awarded the creators of the best concept the opportunity to participate in the Digital Business World Congress in Madrid in the spring of 2019.

This year’s winning concept, developed by a group of four students from the Tashkent region, consists of an application that can be used to track the quality of mobile Internet in any specific region in Uzbekistan, thus enhancing the access to data in remote areas by allowing consumers to make a more informed decision as to their data provider. Overall, more than 500 people participated in this year’s Challenge, of which around a quarter were women, making it the most successful edition of the competition yet.

The Open Data Challenge 2018 was supported by the PCUz as part of its ongoing efforts to promote transparency and public access to information in Uzbekistan, and in partial fulfillment of its commitments under the project Support Uzbekistan in Improvement of Open Data Management.