Introduction

The Presidential Hackathon is an initiative designed by the Taiwanese government to demonstrate its emphasis on open data and innovative data use to address the needs of national development and social needs. The event aims to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaborative learning among data owners, data scientists and field experts by bringing together the collective wisdom and experts from across government, industry and private and civil society. Ultimately, it strives to accelerate the optimization of public services and encourage proactive innovation from public servants to upgrade government services by enabling a ‘hacker culture’, promoting the well-being of the people and creating global partnerships.

Launched in 2018 by the Taiwan Presidency as a domestic challenge, the Taiwan Presidency then expanded the initiative to include an international track in 2019 where participants from around the world were invited to propose open data solutions for delivering a better and more sustainable environment worldwide.

Challenge Theme: Climate Action

Climate change is affecting people on every continent. It is disrupting national economies and affecting lives. After rising steadily for decades, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4%, or 2.3 billion tonnes, in 2020, due to the reduction in economic and social activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, hopes for climate benefits from the slowdown are likely to be dashed quickly once the global economy begins to recover from the pandemic.
Saving lives and livelihoods requires urgent action to address the climate emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic is a good opportunity to change course toward Climate Action, one of the Sustainable Development Goals supported by the United Nations.
In this year’s Presidential Hackathon, we would like to invite civic hackers around the world to submit and develop your ideas for accelerating green recovery, enabling green transition, and for fighting climate change, and for building transnational partnership to solve cross-border climate issues.
In particular, we are looking for proposals that emphasize on climate mitigation or climate adaptation.

Challenge topics

Climate mitigation

• How to increase natural disaster preparedness?
• How to build, or improve disaster early warning systems?
• How to improve existing disaster recovery management systems?

Climate adaptation

• How to achieve net-zero carbon emissions?
• How to facilitate resilient urban development
• How to accelerate clean energy transformation?
• What are the better ways for water resource management?

Climate & other SDGs

• How to promote equality during the green transition?
• How to ensure government transparency during the green transition?

Why apply?

Propel your innovation ambitions.

Get dedicated support in advancing your innovation. Create actionable data, analysis and tools through a dedicated Climate Mitigation or Climate Adaptation that will help you achieve your ambitious Climate Action.

Learn globally, change locally.

Become a change agent in the Climate Action space. Learn from global innovators and practitioners on what works and which mistakes to avoid in generating, analysing and prototyping Climate Mitigation or Climate Adaptation locally or globally.

Join a community of innovators.

Connect with experienced peers who have led successful innovation projects and overcome similar challenges. Be part of an active community and network that can help change global, regional and national norms.

Win the final pitch invitation and more!

Make your project sparkle in Taiwan! Prizes for winning teams include:

• Award cup
• The opportunity to present your live demo in the Taiwan Presidential Office.
• An invitation from the Taiwanese government for future collaboration.

Travel arrangements and reimbursement will be announced once when approved by the Organizer.

The Organizer reserves the right to alter the format of the Finalist event, award and prizes at any time without prior notice to the participants, in which case they will make reasonable effort to inform the participants prior to the date of the event.

Important dates

 Application close：August 4, 2021 (GMT+8 15:00)
 Acceptance announcement：late of August
 Finalist events：To Be Confirmed
 Award Ceremony：Early December

For more information, please check the hackathon website here!