"I hope that the hackathon will result in the continuation of real cooperation between the state and several enterprises," said Deputy Secretary General for IT and Telecom of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications Siim Sikkut, chairman of the panel of judges for the event. "Many of the solutions created here will be ready for immediate use after some refinement and would make the state's functioning more efficient, simpler and more convenient for people."

He added that it was a pleasure to see that quite a few companies came together once again to address real life problems in the public sector.

The objective of Guardtime's solution was to establish a trustworthy means for the collection and later use of evidence in connection with domestic violence by, for example, the police or in court.

"As this is a highly sensitive issue and sensitive data, we found a way for the victim to collect digital data about domestic violence using blockchain technology so that the perpetrator would not notice and the data could not be changed later," explained Silver Kelk, head of the winning team.

According to Sikkut, the winning solution addressed a topic that is important to society as well as showcased a technically strong performance.

"After all, everyone and every company wants to make the world a better place with their activities," Kelk highlighted. "This hackathon format provides a very good opportunity to offer a solution to important problems that will improve the Estonian state and society. We are very glad to have been able to contribute to solving such an important and pressing issue."

All of the participants in the hackathon found it exciting to witness how a problem can find a practical and entirely doable solution in just 48 hours, he added.

Kelk said that he hopes that the €7,000 prize donated by Guardtime to organizations involved in helping victims of domestic violence as well as further cooperation with the ministries that brought the issue to the hackathon will help alleviate the situation.

Guardtime was represented in the hackathon by a four-member team led by business development specialist Silver Kelk and featuring design manager Veiko Jääger, software engineer Joosep Simm, and user experience (UX) engineer Carol Tikerperi.

Hackathon produces practical solutions

The second digital state hackathon was held from May 29-31 and brought together 13 tech companies tasked with solving various real-world issues in the public sector over the course of 48 hours.

Second place was awarded to Codebone for creating an event organization solution for the Office of the President, and third place went to Nortal for creating an application that could help improve the organization of volunteers in search and rescue efforts.

The digital state hackathon was organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in cooperation with Garage48.

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