On June 17-19, Technohub hosted the „Digitalizing Governance” hackathon, a marathon-event organized by Garage 48 in order to develop and promote electronic applications relevant to digital governance. SAR researcher Andrei Macsut was part of the team that won second prize, having initiated the idea for “Map the State”.
The application, developed in 48 hours together with a team passionate about good government and comprised of IT professionals, originates from the idea that all citizens have, at some point, needed a public service and did not know what institution to address. Such situations lead to confusion and long queues at wrong offices, to overburdening of some institutions while others remain unknown in spite of their usefulness, and to loss of opportunities (such as grants, funding, etc.) that citizens might not even be aware they can access.
In order to address these issues, and create an online mechanism for keeping track of public institutions, including structural and administrative changes over time, the “Map the State” team created a prototype online application that collects data about public institutions from user input, centralizes it into a database and compiles a visual representation of in the form of an organization chart that displays the hierarchical relationships between institutions, their contact details, their attributions and the public services they can offer (in language that is accessible), or any other kind of public information.
This instrument can have virtually limitless usage, as the Map the State team successfully demonstrated by quickly identifying the solution to a specific problem. The example given assumed one wanted to denounce a case of corruption, but without knowing which of the anti-corruption institutions in Romania had the competence to handle that specific case. Using the Map the State application, a search for keywords returned a list of every institution competent in the field, along with explanations regarding the type of case that each can investigate, as well as contact details so that the citizen would know exactly who to address.
More about the event and about the winning applications here.
