• McGowan Government unlocks government data for WA ICT experts
• Hackathon sees tech experts develop digital solutions for problems and opportunities in the agriculture sector 

Innovative Western Australian ICT experts gathered in Perth for an agriculture hackathon last weekend, to seek new digital solutions to drive growth and keep our agricultural sector globally competitive.

AgHack, which ran from Friday (July 27) to Sunday (July 29), was sponsored by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, in partnership with the Office of Digital Government and not-for-profit organisation Ministry of Data.

Participants were given access to DPIRD's application programming interfaces for weather and radar, as well as new APIs for soils, science, organisms and Pestfax Map, to create concepts and prototypes to improve productivity and overcome obstacles to growth.

Winning group Dex developed a concept for better pest identification, while other concepts included using data to improve grain grading at the farm-gate and a digital mapping tool for measuring carbon offsets.

These concepts can be adapted for on-farm use in apps for mobile devices, monitoring and surveillance devices, decision making aids or other digital tools.

The hackathon provided a forum to stimulate technological innovation that could solve real-life problems, while participants got the opportunity to generate a potential new commercial digital product.

Read more via the media statement.