Matthew Nelson
The General Services Administration will host a multi-city hackathon event on June 19 that seeks to explore concepts that will optimize procurement, human resources and other applications used by the agency, Nextgov said Friday.
It plans to conduct the event simultaneously at various locations, including New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Texas, where interested parties will compete for cash prizes totalling $20K.
Participants will be divided into four groups as they develop approaches that will help modernize the design, features and processes of four GSA apps. Four finalists will receive $2.5K each, before moving on to compete for an additional $10K in cash.
The applications selected by GSA for the competition include the Human Resources Links tool, the Federal Real Profile management platform, Acquisition Gateway and an information technology service help desk system.
Kris Rowley, Chief Data Officer and Acting Chief Technology Officer at the GSA, will be in charge of the hackathon event.
“By bringing people from the outside with no affiliation, just pure skillsets, with a very brief background on what we’re trying to achieve, I hope to be able to get out of it ideas that we wouldn’t normally come up with—better than what we’d normally come up with—in a shorter period of time and for less money,†said Rowley.
