Brussels hacks the crisis

The Brussels Region invites you to share your innovative ideas to tackle the crisis and imagine a world post Covid. We will develop the two most impactful ideas in digital applications during the month of July!

"Brussels hacks the crisis" consists of several phases:

As a first step, all inhabitants of Brussels are invited to share their ideas, which can then serve as a starting point for the the students who will develop it during the month of July.

In a second phase, the ideas are examined and selected by a jury of experts, according to 3 criteria:

• is your proposal sufficiently elaborated,
• has not already been developed,
• does it fall within the competences of the Brussels government

In a third phase, the ideas selected by the jury are then put to the vote of the Brussels citizen.

After that, the 2 ideas with the most votes will be developed by 2 highly motivated student teams throughout July. You can at any time follow this project and participate in the creation of the application or the new service, on this platform.

The project then ends on Thursday July 30 by a "Demo Day", where you can discover the two prototypes developed by the students.

Finally, the Brussels Regional Informatics Centre (BRIC), then works on the application or prototype, so that it can be deployed toward all Brussels residents.

Who took the initiative for this project?

Upon proposal by Bernard Clerfayt, Brussels Minister for Digital Transition, the Brussels Regional Informatics Centre (BRIC) is launching its citizen participation platform in order to question Brussels residents on how they envisage the post-Covid era and to develop the two most impactful ideas in digital applications this summer.

By launching this project, the Brussels Region shows that it is in favor of a new model of participation which allows discussion on complex issues. This project is part of the regional policy declaration 2019-2024 which aims to transform Brussels into a Smart City and which wishes to organize a participative and inclusive decision-making process.

The BRIC is the ICT partner entrusted, within the Brussels-Capital Region, with any mission of ICT, telematics and cartographic development of and assistance to regional, community and local institutions; the offices of the Ministers and State Secretaries of the Government and to public-interest organisations. The BRIC also manages the Brussels Smart City initiative.

These ideas will be shared via the participation platform of CitizenLab, a young Brussels startup that allows municipalities, municipalities and local authorities to consult their citizens in order to make their decision-making more transparent and collaborative.

Open Summer of Code is an innovation program which offers students the opportunity to work for one month on the development of open source projects. This year its celebrates its tenth edition! The ambiance is that of a hackathon but unlike standard hackathons which generally take place over a few days, "Brussels hacks the crisis" will be organized throughout the month of July, which will allow teams to develop very concrete prototypes during this term.

What is a Hackathon, why "Brussels hacks the crisis"?

A hackathon is an event during which groups of volunteer developers meet for a given period of time in order to work on IT programming projects in a collaborative manner. The word is a contraction of "hacker" and "marathon". Hacker means to hack but with a positive connotation: bypassing an obstacle, tackling a problem. And the marathon refers to the intensive side of hackahtons which sometimes last several days (and nights) without interruption.

Brussels hacks the crisis takes up this idea of overcoming the crisis, of fighting it out with the Covid, thanks to the collaboration of citizens and the development of innovative and digital solutions.