EuroVisor wins Garage48 e-Justice idea hackathon
After reviewing the presentations at Garage48's idea hackathon, which was held within the framework of the e-justice related conference "Futur-e-Justice" held in Tallinn on Oct. 19-20, the jury picked EuroVisor as the winning team.
EuroVisor is a convenient application for travelers which takes into account both the user's country of origin and country of destination and enables a handy comparison of legislation in different countries, according to an Estonian EU presidency press release.
Approximately 200 justice-sector leaders, visionaries and IT developers from across Europe traveled to Tallinn to attend the two-day e-Justice related conference hosted by Estonia's Ministry of Justice and the related idea hackathon organized by Garage48.
On the first day of the conference, e-Justice leaders and e-governance forerunners discussed ways to make the justice domain more accessible for Europeans by applying principles from the digital world; on the second day, decisions were adopted regarding substantive progress in the domain.
The team-based brainstorming and idea hackathon simultaneously hosted by Garage48 also led to the establishment of practical technical solutions to further develop the e-Justice field.
"Usually, hackathon participants include technologically skilled people that really want to apply their skills in making something that matters happen," explained hackathon jury member and Fortumo startup co-founder Rain Rannu. "However, Garage48 stands out in involving a multitude of legal practitioners that have substantive knowledge in terms of problematic areas in the current e-justice environment."
Following prolonged deliberations, the five-member jury for the event decided to name EuroVisor, the team to develop the app comparing legislation in different countries, the winner of the event.
"It was indeed a difficult task to select the winner, because the teams were tackling real, problematic issues present in the e-justice system and the discernible benefit of implementing these ideas is almost tangible," said Rannu. "The winning idea stood apart from the rest as being usable across Europe by virtually every frequently traveling citizen of each member state. It's original and so simple; an application like this should really have been put in place a while ago."
The e-Justice idea hackathon was instituted by the Estonian Ministry of Justice and implemented with the help of Garage48 as funded by the European Regional Development Fund utilizing EU structural funds via the support scheme "Raising Public Awareness about the Information Society."
Editor: Aili Vahtla