Hello Nadia,
Thank you for your reply.
Actually we have contacts in 2 municipalities in Tunis and another one out of Tunis. I didn’t mention them because the project needs to be approved before.
The aim of the hackathon is to improve the quality of public service delivery provided by municipalities. Many actors are recommending solutions but few are focusing on ICT as a method to solve the challenges cities are facing, that’s why it is called a “Smart City” hackathon.
The innovation we are bringing here is that it is the first time that a Hackathon takes municipalities as a subject and connects them to problem solvers among citizens. Second, also for the first time, we will be mixing municipalities representatives with developers in the same team and this will be of a great impact even after the end of the event.
To be more specific, our goal is to come out with ICT based ideas that would boost the work of municipalities in the following activities which, if improved, can make the life of citizens a way better: waste management, parking management, infrastructure management, energy conservation regarding public lighting, providing building permits, tax collection, revenues ‘ads collection etc. Who doesn’t want waste to be collected on time, building permits to get faster, waiting time on queues reduced, constructions deadlines to be respected, green sites to be increased, historical sites to be preserved, citizens be more involved etc? Maybe there are easy ways to improve that but municipalities they don’t see it because they already have a huge workload? Maybe they need help from fresh minds who think outside of the box?
Good examples can be found within municipality of Kairouan which implemented an app to monitor the garbage collection and municipality of Djerba that is using GIS (Geographic Information System) tool to empower interaction with citizens.
The first step will be to launch the call for participation online, meanwhile the selection of coaches, mentors and jury will take place. The objective is to have at least 10 teams. Each team is composed of 3 to 4 members and it is required to have at least one developer among its members.
In the first day, the 24h challenge will start with the representatives of the three municipalities who will express their biggest challenges to participants, who will then have the opportunity to ask them questions before choosing which problem they will work on. Right after, we will invite some municipalities who have already integrated ICT-based solutions in their processes and showcase them as examples. This will be followed by a design thinking training session for all teams to help them in the ideation. After that, the timer will be on and teams will start working on a prototype that represents their solutions. There will be mentors to give them pieces of advice.
In the second day, there will be a pitch training and after that, teams will pitch their ideas in front of a jury panel composed of municipalities’ representatives and ICT experts. The event ends with the announcement of the three winning teams.
Well, with the new wave of #Peoplewant movement that is taking place after the presidential elections, we are not only providing to citizens a real platform where then can have direct interactions with their municipalities but also a safe place where they can turn their recommendations into reality while feeling involved.
The success of our first event will result in the replication of this model in other municipalities. In fact, we consider that our work won’t end up there. We will rely on municipal councils and sponsors support to provide seed capital to the different winners and we will work with other partners on the incubation phase.
The team behind this challenge is me Ahmed Hadhri, a community builder who co-launched two coworking spaces in Tunis, organized several events and has been very active in the Tunisian entrepreneurship ecosystem. In addition to Mehdi El Batti, a Financial Management Analyst within the World Bank and the genius behind the “Hack 4 Transparency”, a successful Hackathon organized this year with the court of auditors. Both of us have the required experience and network to make this “Smart City” challenge a success.
LinkedIns:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-hadhri/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehdielbatti/
Hope this answers your questions. I will be at your disposal for further information. I will send you the budget in an additional comment.