The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has kicked started the 2024 edition of the Statistical Data Hackathon for Technical Universities.
The Statistical Data Hackathon is aimed at promoting the use of data particularly in the academia to address societal issues through competition.
The maiden edition was held last year among five traditional universities with the University of Cape Coast emerging winners.
The second edition takes the competition to the various technical universities, where students of 6 institutions will compete on the most innovative ways of utilizing data to solve social issues.
Speaking at an opening ceremony for the commencement of a 3-day preliminaries of the competition for students of the Bolgatanga Technical University, Director of Administration at the GSS Kwadwo Asante-Mensah said the competition will ensure that data already gathered at the expense of the taxpayer is put to good use.
He stated that the GSS, in collaboration with Statistics Denmark, has established a databank known as StatsBank and thus, the competition is geared towards encouraging institutions and individuals to make use of the about 350 million data variables contained in the StasBank instead of spending additional resources to gather new ones.
He encouraged the participating teams to give off their best as he indicated that the winners of the contest will not only be awarded prizes but also will have an opportunity to be mentored.
“What we want to learn from is how creative you are in turning data, showing the value of data, what we can use data to accomplish in our society and we know that your mentors have trained you well so we expect the best from you. And at the end of the day, the best teams will be invited to Accra to compete with the other 5 institutions and then we get the best,” he stated.
“We are not going to end the exercise only with competition. We are thinking of mentoring those who will win, giving opportunity to work with our professional statisticians to develop their skills further for the benefit of our country, our regions and respective districts”.
At the Bolgatanga Technical University, 5 teams of students are competing for 3 slots at the national level. Each team has 3 days beginning Wednesday, September 25, 2024 to come out with innovative methods of utilizing available data.
Focal Person of the Local BTU Organizing team, Benjamin Apam said the school’s participating teams have been well prepared to win the contest.
