In a previous report on Data.gov.sg, we learnt about an upcoming data visualisation competition for students from universities, polytechnics, junior colleges and institutes of technical education across Singapore.
On 3 February, the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) launched a nationwide competition, called the National Data Visualisation Video Challenge. It is a part of the Singapore government’s efforts to spur an open data movement and catalyse ground-up civic innovation.
Open data sharing is one of the key priorities in Singapore’s Smart Nation journey. Opening up datasets and APIs (Application programming interface) can encourage citizens to make better informed decisions in their daily lives and drive innovation.
There have been several innovations, leveraging open data to make a difference to the daily lives of Singaporeans, including a real-time taxi availability heat map and zika and dengue hotspots.
The theme of the Challenge is “How Open Data makes a difference for you and me”. It is open to students from Singapore-based Institutes of Higher Learning (i.e. Universities, Polytechnics, and Institutes of Technical Education or ITEs) and Junior Colleges (JCs). Students can participate individually or form teams of up to 4 persons within the same institution.
Students will need to use and analyse government datasets from Singapore’s open data portal, data.gov.sg & other publicly available data sources to create an impactful visualisation video. All submitted entries must include a minimum of three datasets from Data.gov.sg to be eligible for consideration.
There will be two rounds of Judging – the Qualifying and Challenge Rounds. The Qualifying Round will be the submission of storyboards for the first round of evaluation. It ends on Friday, 28 April. Selected teams for the Qualifying Round will advance to the Challenge Round, where they will create the visualisation video of 60 to 90 seconds in length. The video can be in the form of animation, motion graphics, stop motion, and any other relevant video styles, which would best convey the story the participants are telling through data. The best three videos for the Challenge will be selected winners.
The judging will be based on 3 criteria: 1) Application and analytics of data– 40% weightage (How creative is the use of data? How effectively have these datasets been applied or cross-analysed?; 2) Quality and creativity of storyline for Qualifying Round and video production for Challenge Round – 40% weightage (Is the story idea easy to comprehend for the general public? How effective is it in telling the story? Is it creative enough to attract public attention and go viral?); 3) Impact and Insights generated– 20% weightage (Significance and benefits to the society? Ability to make the public realise the benefits of open data? How relevant is the story idea in relation to the theme of the Challenge?)
The criteria reflects the focus on making data meaningful and understable for regular citizens of Singapore. The Challenge would require cross-disciplinary collaboration between the computer science/analytics and visual media students.
The Challenge has received strong interest from the schools. It ties in with Singapore’s focus on cultivating data analytics and application capabilities among the youth, as it will be one of the core skillsets for jobs of the future.
The industry partners for the Challenge, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Cloudera, and The Straits Times, will be providing support in terms of data analytics platforms and tools, prizes and judging. It is yet another example of partnership between government, academia and industry.
A briefing will be conducted at GovTech Hive on 17 February 2017, 1800-2100hrs (Sandcrawler Building, Level 8, 1 Fusionopolis View, Singapore 138577). Participants are required to register their interest (Name, Email Address, Number of pax attending) for the briefing by 13 February 2017 through competitions@data.gov.sg.
