Three Wyoming teams placed highly in a competition focused on finding creative solutions to problems faced by government agencies in Wyoming and Colorado.

Google’s GovDev Competition, which took place in Denver May 17-18, provided a chance for software developers to take real world problems and find solutions for them while competing to win up to $5000 from Google. Developers were given only 24 hours to create their solutions and were required to use at least one Google tool in the process. Participants chose from three categories in which to compete. One category was sponsored by Wyoming, while two were sponsored by Colorado.

Two Wyoming teams placed in the Wyoming sponsored category: Budget Data Transparency. In this challenge, developers were asked to find a way to make it more convenient for citizens to find how tax dollars are being spent. As described in the GovDev Challenge Overview, budget data requests in Wyoming currently involve multiple people to find the information and get it to the person requesting it.

While solutions created during the competition will not directly be picked up by state agencies,  solutions like these are what will help governments solve similar issues. Jared Kail, member of the first place team Code Rangers said, “Wyoming is our home and taking on its challenges is our passion. Hopefully solutions like this will lead to more transparency and citizen involvement with the state budgeting and allocation processes.”

The winning team, Code Rangers, is made up of Wyolution co-owners Jared Kail and Mark Thoney along with Sheridan Programmers Guild Owner Anne Gunn and owner of Gannett Peak Technical Services Tighe Fagan. You can see an example of the winning project here.

Third place in the Wyoming category was awarded to Gannett Peak Technical Services owner Ryan Fagan and his team, Auditor Search.

Speed Goats, a Wyoming team consisting of Lee Pepper, Jordan Dean, Marshall Moore, Shawn Becker and Jonathan Barella took second place in the Colorado sponsored category: Disaster Assistance Center Materials Management. The other Colorado category focused on Disaster Assistance Center Automation. Both categories were in direct response to Colorado’s 2013 flood season when hundreds of flood victims went to emergency assistance centers, which were slowed by labor intensive paperwork.

For more information regarding Google’s GovDev Challenge please visit www.govdevchallenge.com .

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