EU Datathon 2019

The EU Datathon is a growing-in-popularity event aiming to further stimulate the use of open data issued by the European Union. It allows competitors to showcase their data skills and innovative ideas. Furthermore, it offers them the opportunity to network and gather support in order to continue developing their ideas after the competition.

Participants are invited to develop applications, visualisations and insights using at least one dataset produced by the EU Institutions, Agencies and bodies available on the EU Open Data Portal and combine it with at least one dataset on the European Data Portal, the European Central Bank, Eurostat Website and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The competition is supported by the European Parliament’s Preparatory Action “Linked Open Data in the European Public Administration” and the European Commission ISA² programme (Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizen).

The EU Datathon 2019 is open to anyone (statisticians, economists, researchers, computer programmers, data journalists, data community activists, data scientists, graphic and interface designers, IT project managers, university students and PhD students, etc.) who is interested in creating a profit or non-profit (social) business model through data exploration and/or in creating open data prototype products based on open and public data.

The EU Datathon 2019 is open to teams based in the EU or in European Free Trade Association countries. Teams can be composed of one or more individuals, one or more companies or one or more other legal entities.

Finalists from the EU Datathon 2017 and EU Datathon 2018 can only participate with a new project for this year’s competition.

The EU Datathon 2019 is not open to staff working in the EU Institutions, Agencies, bodies and partnering organisation.

The participating teams can compete with their apps in one horizontal or two thematic challenges:

• Challenge 1: ‘Innovative ideas through EU open data’
• Challenge 2: ‘New insights into economics and finance’
• Challenge 3: ‘Tackling climate change’

The competition is supported by the European Parliament’s Preparatory Action “Linked Open Data in the European Public Administration” and the European Commission ISA² programme (Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizen).

Joining the 2019 competition gives the opportunity to win one of the cash prizes in each challenge:

• 1st prize EUR 15.000
• 2nd prize EUR 7.000
• 3rd prize EUR 3.000

Teams register their project descriptions for their mobile or web application using the online registration form at the latest by 23:59:59 (CET) on 24 March 2019.

The project descriptions are assessed by the jury of the preselection phase. All participating teams will be notified about the results within their challenge via email by 5 April 2019.

Shortlisted teams should submit their final proposals for evaluation by 7 June 2019 to the Publications Office via the following email address: op-datathon@publications.europa.eu

The preselected teams (represented by a maximum of two members) are invited to the final conference in Brussels on 13 June 2019, which will include:

• presentations and demonstrations of the proposal by the teams followed by Q&A;
• speeches from international open data experts on relevant topics;
• announcement of the winners and awards ceremony.