New Zealand’s most populous city, Auckland, will be hosting its first civic hackathon, HACKAKL:Transport, bringing local government together with community members to innovate, problem-solve and create better communities with open data.

Auckland Council aims to become the world’s most liveable city and transport services are seen as a key enabler of this goal. While Auckland Transport (AT) has a set of service improvements underway, it realises that its customer experience and connection with users of its services will drive the growth of its services.

The hackathon is supported by AT in conjunction with AUT University and software house Propellerhead. It brings together members of the community who are interested in utilising open government data to develop fresh ideas that will help improve Auckland.

A key goal of the event is to establish a community that will drive the civic hacking and open government agenda in Auckland. Roger Jones, General Manager of Business Technology at AT, said, “This is a great opportunity for AT to open itself up to new ideas and innovation.”

As the event approaches, AT will publish a beta application programming interface or API that will open up a wide range of the organisation’s data, including real-time bus information, geo-coding, road and congestion data.

The event highlights open source as key to supporting the evolution and democratisation of open data. The organisers have set up a community GitHub where collaborators can store, access and improve source code.