Go Code Colorado plunges into year three

The Go Code Colorado team is back for a bigger and better third year - better data, bigger voice and improved challenges.

DENVER, Nov. 12, 2015 - Go Code Colorado, an award-winning initiative of Secretary of State Wayne Williams’ office, today launched its third annual statewide civic app challenge.

The effort aims to bring government, business and tech communities together to make public data accessible and enhance the state’s business environment. Last year, Go Code Colorado grew participation, saw stronger app and business ideas, and created a must-attend "mentor weekend" for the finalists. This year, Go Code Colorado aims to increase participation among the tech entrepreneur community, gather more information from the business community to develop even more market-relevant apps, and continue to be a leading voice, putting Colorado at the front of the open-data movement.

"Go Code Colorado began as an innovate experiment in building a community around open data," said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams. "As we enter the third year of the challenge, the program has solidified its place, opening up access to public data while building a community of tech and business leaders who are using the data to improve Colorado’s business environment."

The dates for the 2016 challenge event series are:

• Feb. 3: kickoff in Denver
• April 1-3: challenge weekend (five locations across the state)
• April 15-17: mentor weekend in Boulder
• May 26: final event in Denver

Go Code Colorado supports the Governor’s Office of Information Technology’s open data initiative, the Colorado Information Marketplace, online at data.colorado.gov, which provides Coloradans with a dataset catalog, dataset repository, an application programming interface (API) and several tools for exploring and visualizing data.

During the first two program years, Go Code Colorado has helped state agencies publish more than 150 datasets and run a civic app challenge asking developers and entrepreneurs to use the public data to help solve business problems. The app challenge builds civic and community engagement, enhances tech innovation and enhances government transparency.

Go Code Colorado has won numerous awards including CIO Magazine CIO 100 Award (2015), the Colorado Technology Association Technology Project of the Year Award (2014), the International Association of Commercial Administrators Merit Award (2015), the National Association of Secretaries of State IDEAS Award (2015), and has been recognized as a Bright Idea by Harvard’s Kennedy School through its Innovations in American Government Awards competition.

Read more about Go Code Colorado.

About Go Code Colorado:  Go Code Colorado is a statewide civic app challenge housed in Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams’ office. The award-winning challenge - the first and only statewide effort of its kind - brings together a community of entrepreneurs, business partners and software developers to use public data to solve business problems. Many private sector organizations support Go Code Colorado, including the 2016 summit partner, AT&T.