In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Banco de Previsión Social (BPS) this institution, together with the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology (Cuti), presented the Hackathon Seguridad Social BPS 2017, an open competition that aims to promote entrepreneurship and innovation to strengthen the social security sector in Uruguay.
The competition, which will take place on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 November at Kibón Avanza, will bring together entrepreneurs, researchers, experts in business and information and communication technologies (ICT) and specialists in social security. The challenge will be to develop a solution model to solve some of the challenges presented by the social security system.
The manager of Informatics Services of the BPS, Roque Villamil, and the president of Cuti, Leonardo Loureiro, explained the reasons why they decided to do a hackathon, (name that comes from the conjunction of the terms hacker and marathon).
"These types of activities are used worldwide to promote innovation and encourage people to come up with innovative ways to solve multiple challenges. This time the challenge is to solve social problems," said Loureiro.
The participating teams will have mentors specialized in different topics, both nationally and internationally, who will provide technical advice, information of interest related to the welfare and social security sector and will support them in the management of the ventures.
For his part, Villamil referred to the hackathon as an opportunity to get closer to citizens. "The BPS invests a lot in technology and is always looking for ways to reinvent itself; so, with this first step, what we want is to leave the doors open so that people know that when they come up with an idea they have a way to contact us, they can raise it and then we will see how to make it compatible with the daily work of the bank," said Roque Villamil.
The proposed challenges include improving the BPS's approach to citizens, the use of ICTs to assist various segments of the population, how to reduce informal work, and how to find an alternative that provides greater transparency to citizens and identifies the destination of their contributions and their benefits.
Loureiro emphasized the great potential Uruguay has to develop new digital forms of citizen service. "We must take advantage of the ecosystem that the country offers, as an example, we can take the Ibirapitá Plan, an action that brings with it a wealth of opportunities to develop new tools," he emphasized.
For more information about registration to the event you can enter the website hackathon.bps.gub.uy. The only mandatory requirement is to be 15 years old.
Learn more about: #HackathonBPS
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