What technologies did students create at the SimpleGov hackathon?

From October 21 to 28, Usabilitylab.kz held the SimpleGov hackathon in Astana, aimed at redesigning and reengineering the user experience of eGov by students from the capital's universities.

20 students from Astana IT University and KazATU, divided into 4 teams, with the support of mentors from Usabilitylab.kz and analysts from the CPC, spent a week generating hypotheses, conducting user interviews, building Customer Journey Maps (CJM), creating User Flows, and developing prototypes for a version of eGov that would be easier for residents and guests of Kazakhstan to use.

The results were prototypes of changes that could appear on eGov:

— automatic forwarding of certificates to the institutions for which the user requests them

— exchange of certificates between institutions without user involvement: the user only receives and confirms a notification of the certificate request

— two-factor authentication similar to Google's

— an activity log in the personal account

— flexible semantic search, showing results not only based on the search query but also on formulations derived from it

— a separate block with recommended or frequently requested services

— personalization of offered services based on manual selection of one's demographic group or identification after authorization

— auto-notification about services that must be obtained at certain ages or circumstances, such as upon entering a university, with a link to the service.

Participants who proposed the most interesting and well-developed solutions received prizes, including:

— brunch with the Minister of Digitalization Bagdat Musin

— free training at the Usabilitylab School

— invitations for internships and interviews — limited-edition gifts and hackathon-branded merchandise.