Rewired State was an organisation which ran a series of

hack day A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

s for programmers and designers, focused on improving access to UK government open data and encouraging innovation in government services. Rewired State was founded by James Darling,

Emma Mulqueeny Emma Elizabeth Mulqueeny (Given name, née Knight; born 12 July 1971) is a British technologist and educator. She is best known for co-founding Rewired State and Young Rewired State, which provided a community and events for technically gifted ...

, and Richard Pope in 2008. The first event, ''National Hack the Government Day'', was held on 7 March 2009 at the ''

Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...

'' offices in King's Cross, London. Over 80 people attended producing over 30 hacks. Judges at Rewired State events included Tom Watson MP and Dr Sue Black. Sponsors included the

Government Digital Service The Government Digital Service is a unit of the Government of the United Kingdom's Cabinet Office tasked with transforming the provision of online public services. It was formed in April 2011 to implement the "Digital by Default" strategy prop ...

mySociety mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that t ...

, and

Nesta Nesta (formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is an innovation foundation based in the UK. The organisation acts through a combination of programmes, investment, policy and research, and the formation of part ...

. National Hack the Government Day ran annually until 2015. Rewired State Geeks

Parliament Hack

Between 2011 and 2013, Rewired State ran a series of ''Parliament Hack'' events in association with the

UK Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremac ...

, with the aim to build new apps using parliamentary data.

Young Rewired State

Rewired State formed a sister organisation, Young Rewired State, to bring young developers together to solve real world problems. Young Rewired State ran its own series of Festival of Code hack days from 2009. The last event run by Young Rewired State was the 2015 Festival of Code, and the organisation was formally dissolved in February 2019. Young Rewired State also ran various "Hyperlocal" centres across the UK, which provide coding challenges across the year, rather than being focused on one week as in the Festival of Code. Many developers who participated in Young Rewired State events learned coding skills outside the traditional school curriculum.

Festival of Code

Between 2009 and 2015, Young Rewired State held a national five-day

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...

where attendees across the UK took part in a competition to make an application including at least one piece of open government data. This event was initially called "Young Rewired State", but was renamed in 2012 to the "

Festival of Code Rewired State was an organisation which ran a series of hack days for programmers and designers, focused on improving access to UK government open data and encouraging innovation in government services. Rewired State was founded by James Darli ...

". In 2009, when the event first started, there were only 50 participants attending a weekend at

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

's London offices. This number rose to roughly a thousand young people participating across United Kingdom and in centres in other countries. Between the first event in 2009 and the penultimate event in 2015 the proportion of female participants rose from 2% to 30%. In 2016, it was announced that year's Festival of Code would be postponed to 2017, but the event did not occur in 2017 or in subsequent years.

Other events

Rewired State also ran a number of other government data hack days including ''Rewired State: Culture'', ''(H)activate'', ''Middle East Hack'', ''Follow the Data'', and ''Carbon and Energy Hack Weekend''.

Last event and closure

National Hack the Government Day and other events ran annually until the last event in 2015. Between 2015 and 2016, Rewired State was run as a consultancy business by Emma Mulqueeny. The company was dissolved in 2018.

References

{{Reflist Computing and society Software development events