The Center for Technology, Society & Policy (CTSP) seeks proposals for a Data for Good Competition. The competition will be hosted and promoted by CTSP in coordination with the UC Berkeley School of Information IMSA, and made possible through funds provided by Facebook.

Team proposals will apply data science skills to address a social good problem with public open data. The objective of the Data for Good Competition is to incentivize students from across the UC Berkeley campus to apply their data science skills towards a compelling public policy or social justice issue.

The competition is intended to encourage the creation of data tools or analyses of open data. Open datasets may be local, state, national, or international as long as they are publicly accessible. The data tool or analysis may include, but is not limited to:

  1. integration or combination of two or more disparate datasets, including integration with private datasets;
  2. data conversions into more accessible formats;
  3. visualization of data graphically, temporally, and/or spatially;
  4. data validations or verifications with other open data sources;
  5. platforms that help citizens access and/or manipulate data without coding experience; etc.

Issues that may be relevant and addressed via this competition include environmental issues, civic engagement (e.g., voting), government accountability, land use (e.g., housing challenges, agriculture), criminal justice, access to health care, etc. CTSP suggests that teams should consider using local or California state data since there may be additional opportunities for access and collaboration with agencies who produce and maintain these datasets.

You can find more information on the CTSP website. Proposals are due January 28, 2018.  The final competition and presentation will be in early April.