Eurostat is organising the fourth round of the European Big Data Hackathon from  2 to 7 March 2023 (including the presentation by the winners at the NTTS), as an in-person meeting in Brussels. The purpose of  the 2023 hackathon is to foster expertise in using Big Data sources relating to financial transactions for producing innovative ideas for products and tools relevant for the EU policies. 

The European Big Data Hackathon is organised by the European Commission (Eurostat) and gathers teams from all over Europe to compete for the best solution to a statistical challenge. The teams develop innovative approaches, applications and data products combining official statistics and big data that can help to answer pressing EU policy and/or statistical questions.

For points relating to logistics and/or questions on hackathon procedures, please contact our functional mailbox: ESTAT-EU-BD-HACKATHON@ec.europa.eu

Dates

The Hackathon will take off on 2 March 2023 with the announcement of the challenge and will close on 6 March 2023 when the teams present their solutions. The winners will be awarded on 7 March 2023, at the first day of the NTTS 2023, where they have the opportunity to present their solutions more in detail. 

Participation in the Hackathon

Twenty-four hackathon teams of National Statistical Institutes’ experts and four teams of students from EMOS network universities will compete in the 2023 European Big Data Hackathon. 

Data hackathons, also known as data dives, are intense events where teams of data scientists, computer programmers, graphic and interface designers and project managers try to creatively tackle data problems and prototype data analytics products. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week. Some data hackathons are intended simply for educational or social purposes, although in many cases the goal is to create usable data analytics products. Data hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include specific data sources, methodologies, technologies and applications but in other cases, there is no restriction on the type of data analytics product being created.

The European Big Data Hackathon has five objectives.

• To solve statistical problems through leveraging algorithms and exploring big data sets as potential sources for official statistics, by engaging with practitioners, developers and data scientists across Europe, to generate ideas and proposals;
• To build capabilities and identify best-of-class European data scientists, by challenging local developers’ and data scientists’ communities with questions relating to the use of big data for official statistics, by connecting with outstanding participants and teams for possible future collaboration, and by creating networks between statisticians and data scientists for capacity building;
• To promote and accelerate ‘big data for statistics’ initiatives in Europe, by building prototypes for EU countries to test and integrate in their data development work, and by stirring local communities of scientist-entrepreneurs to work more intensively on big data sourcing, processing and enhancing;
• To promote partnerships with research community and private sector, by raising awareness about big data developments in Official Statistics in Europe and by initiating, extending and reinforcing collaboration with the private sector and universities.
• To devise innovative products and tools, including for data visualisation, to stimulate the use of open data and public use files and to engage with new audiences and users.