Infosys extends support for GovHack 2020 in Australia, New Zealand

IT major Infosys on Friday announced extention of its support for GovHack 2020 in Australia and New Zealand.

The two-day hack event, which begins on Friday, is being held simultaneously in Australia and New Zealand and gives competitors 46 hours to create concepts, mashups, and models with open government data, according to a statement.

In doing so, the participants will examine the challenges facing the government and communities in new and innovative ways, it added.

This year, the competition has been fully virtually enabled with the competition schedule, datasets, problem challenges, and team profile pages publicly hosted, it said.

It added that the opening and closing ceremonies will be livestreamed.

GovHack is the largest open data hackathon in the southern hemisphere, the statement added.

"As lead corporate sponsor, Infosys is creating a dedicated version of its learning platform Wingspan, so that participants can learn while they work. Within Infosys, some 2,20,000 employees use this platform to access over 4,000 courses with content provided by in-house experts and over 40 partners," the statement said.

Infosys will also make the Advanced Machine Learning module of its AI platform Infosys Nia available, giving participants the tools and frameworks to manage and apply rules to the flow of data from creation to storage, it added.

Infosys Australia has set the challenge of reimagining the aged-care experience, seeking easily accessible solutions that can keep the elderly safe amid the coronavirus pandemics. Infosys New Zealand is seeking solutions using emerging technology that can help improve responses to future regional, country or world emergencies.

"This is Infosys' third year supporting GovHack as part of our commitment to nurturing digital talent in Australia and New Zealand," Andrew Groth, Senior Vice-President, Infosys, Region Head, Australia and New Zealand, said.

He added that each year, the company is super impressed by the calibre of solutions put forward and "I'm looking forward to seeing what the teams produce this year, working in a virtual environment".