research-article

Preliminary findings on software engineering practices in civic hackathons

Author:

Kiev GamaAuthors Info & Claims

CSI-SE '17: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on CrowdSourcing in Software Engineering

Pages 14 - 20

https://doi.org/10.1109/CSI-SE.2017.5

Published: 20 May 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Civic hackathons gained momentum in the last years, mainly propelled by city halls and government agencies as a way to explore public data repositories. These initiatives became an attempt to crowdsource the development of software applications targeting government transparency and urban life, under the smart cities umbrella. Some authors have been criticizing the results of these competitions, complaining about the usefulness and quality of the software that is produced. However, academic literature has much anecdotal evidence on that, being scarce on empirical analysis of civic hackathons. Therefore, we intended to gather preliminary data not only to help verifying those claims but also to understand how teams in these competitions are tackling the different activities in their software development process, from requirements to application release and maintenance. In this work, we present preliminary results of these findings.

References

[1]

M. Komssi et al, What are hackathons for? IEEE Software 32.5 (2015): 60--67.

[2]

S. J. Carr and A. Lassiter, Big data, small apps: premises and products of the civic hackathon, Seeing Cities Through Big Data. Springer International Publishing, 2017. 543--559.

[3]

P. Johnson and Pamela Robinson, Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement?, Review of Policy Research 31.4 (2014): 349--357.

[4]

C. DiSalvo, M. Gregg and T. Lodato, Building belonging, ACM interactions 21.4 (2014): 58--61.

Digital Library

[5]

M. Lee, E. Almirall and Jonathan Wareham, Open data and civic apps: first-generation failures, second-generation improvements, Communications of the ACM 59.1 (2015): 82--89.

Digital Library

[6]

A. M. Townsend, Smart cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia, WW Norton & Company, 2013.

[7]

H. Schaffers et al. Smart cities and the future internet: Towards cooperation frameworks for open innovation, The Future Internet Assembly. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011.

Digital Library

[8]

H. Hielkema and P. Hongisto, Developing the Helsinki smart city: The role of competitions for open data applications, Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 4(2), 190--204, 2013.

[9]

T. Bakici, E. Almirall and J. Wareham. A smart city initiative: the case of Barcelona, Journal of the Knowledge Economy 4.2 (2013): 135--148.

[10]

M.A. Ferrario et al. Software engineering for'social good': integrating action research, participatory design, and agile development, Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). ACM, 2014.

Digital Library

[11]

K. Mao et al, A survey of the use of crowdsourcing in software engineering Journal of Systems and Software (2016).

[12]

T.D LaToza and A. van der Hoek, Crowdsourcing in Software Engineering: Models, Motivations, and Challenges, IEEE Software 33.1 (2016): 74--80.

Digital Library

[13]

E. H. Trainer et al., How to hackathon: Socio-technical tradeoffs in brief, intensive collocation, Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 2016

Digital Library

[14]

G. Juell-Skielse et al. Is the Public Motivated to Engage in Open Data Innovation?, International Conference on Electronic Government. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014.

[15]

K. Gama, Crowdsourced Software Development in Civic Apps: Motivations and Software Engineering Practices of Civic Hackathons Participants, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS), 2017.

[16]

S. Easterbrook et al., Selecting empirical methods for software engineering research, Guide to advanced empirical software engineering. Springer London (2008): 285--311.

[17]

R. D. Fricker, Sampling methods for web and e-mail surveys, N. Fielding (2008): 195--216.

[18]

B. A. Kitchenham and S.L. Pfleeger, Personal opinion surveys, In Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering, Springer London, (2008): 63--92

[19]

E. Bari et al., Software Crowdsourcing Practices and Research Directions, Service-Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), 2016 IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2016.

[20]

E. di Bella et al., Pair Programming and Software Defects-A Large, Industrial Case Study, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 39.7 (2013): 930--953.

Digital Library

[21]

GovHack, https://www.govhack.org/

[22]

GovHack, GovHack 2016 Review, https://acc-gh16.alan.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GovHack-2016-Review.pdf

[23]

Hackacity, 6 cities, 22 ideas, 1 goal: improve the life in the city. https://www.fiware.org/news/hackacity-6-cities-22-ideas-1-goal-improve-the-life-in-the-city/

[24]

Hacker Cidadão, http://hackercidadao.rec.br/

[25]

G. Briscoe and C. Mulligan, Digital innovation: The hackathon phenomenon, London: Creativeworks London Work Paper 6 (2014).

Cited By

Gama KZimmerle CPaganini L(2023)The Comfort of Distance: Student Choices and Soft Skill Development during a Hybrid Hackathon in Post-Pandemic LearningProceedings of the XXXVII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3613372.3614201(368-377)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613372.3614201
Chau CGerber E(2023)On Hackathons: A Multidisciplinary Literature ReviewProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581234(1-21)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581234
Knutas ASiemon DTylosky NMaccani GHoda RSerebrenik A(2023)Contradicting Motivations in Civic Tech Software Development: Analysis of a Grassroots ProjectProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021(157-163)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Is Brazilian Open Government Data Actually Open Data?: An Analysis of the Current Scenario

Open Government Data OGD hold great promise for transforming the efficiency and effectiveness of public services through the ease of publishing and access to government public information or through the offer of new kinds of services, such as smart ...
Is Brazilian Open Government Data Actually Open Data?: An Analysis of the Current Scenario

Open Government Data OGD hold great promise for transforming the efficiency and effectiveness of public services through the ease of publishing and access to government public information or through the offer of new kinds of services, such as smart ...
Is Brazilian Open Government Data Actually Open Data?: An Analysis of the Current Scenario

Open Government Data OGD hold great promise for transforming the efficiency and effectiveness of public services through the ease of publishing and access to government public information or through the offer of new kinds of services, such as smart ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CSI-SE '17: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on CrowdSourcing in Software Engineering

May 2017

50 pages

ISBN:9781538640418

Program Chairs:
Thomas LaToza
George Mason University
,
Ke Mao
University College London, UK

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society
SADIO: SADIO

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 20 May 2017

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

ICSE '17

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS
SADIO

ICSE '17: 39th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 20 - 28, 2017

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

10
Total Citations
View Citations
100
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)4
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 22 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Gama KZimmerle CPaganini L(2023)The Comfort of Distance: Student Choices and Soft Skill Development during a Hybrid Hackathon in Post-Pandemic LearningProceedings of the XXXVII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3613372.3614201(368-377)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613372.3614201
Chau CGerber E(2023)On Hackathons: A Multidisciplinary Literature ReviewProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581234(1-21)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581234
Knutas ASiemon DTylosky NMaccani GHoda RSerebrenik A(2023)Contradicting Motivations in Civic Tech Software Development: Analysis of a Grassroots ProjectProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021(157-163)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021
Mendes WRichard ATillo TPinto GGama KNolte A(2022)Socio-technical Constraints and Affordances of Virtual Collaboration - A Study of Four Online HackathonsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35552216:CSCW2(1-32)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555221
Falk JKannabiran GHansen NKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)What Do Hackathons Do? Understanding Participation in Hackathons Through Program Theory AnalysisProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445198(1-16)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445198
Steglich CSalerno LFernandes TMarczak SDutra ABacelo ATrindade CCavalcante EDantas FBatista T(2020)Hackathons as a Pedagogical Strategy to Engage Students to Learn and to Adopt Software Engineering PracticesProceedings of the XXXIV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3422392.3422479(670-679)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3422392.3422479
Falk Olesen JHalskov KWakkary RAndersen KOdom WDesjardins APetersen M(2020)10 Years of Research With and On HackathonsProceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3357236.3395543(1073-1088)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3357236.3395543
Knutas APalacin VMaccani GHelfert MKazman RPasquale L(2019)Software engineering in civic tech a case study about code for IrelandProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society10.1109/ICSE-SEIS.2019.14(41-50)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEIS.2019.14
de Almeida Melo Lda Silva Junior FLeite TFilho Fde Souza CMota MSerique BPrates RCandello H(2018)Going Beyond The Challenge!Proceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3274192.3274217(1-10)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274192.3274217
de Oliveira ESilveira MJanssen MChun SWeerakkody V(2018)Open government data in Brazil a systematic review of its uses and issuesProceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age10.1145/3209281.3209339(1-9)Online publication date: 30-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3209281.3209339

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents