Conference Socially Useful Open Technologies: How have disasters digitized us and what next? and weekend Hackathon was organized by Code for Croatia and Gong and in cooperation with Twinning Open Data Operational (TODO) project, on the occasion of the World Open Data Days 2021.

Conference Socially Useful Open Technologies: How have disasters digitized us and what next? was held on March 5th in the building of the Croatian Journalists' Society with virtual transmission for interested participants. The conference consisted of two panels.

The first panel discussed amendments to the Law on the Right of Access to Information. Members of the working group for drafting the draft law – Jagoda Botić from the Information Commissioner's Office, prof. Anamarija Musa from the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Božo Zeba from the Central State Office for development of digital society and Marijana Juričić, judge of the High Administrative Court (who is not a member of the working group), participated in the discussion.

Within the second panel the TODO project researchers and other users of open data from the civil sector, presented their experiences in the use of open data and individual applications developed in certain sectoral areas based on open data from public authorities.

Asst.prof. Ana Kuveždić Divjak, coordinator of TODO project from the Faculty of Geodesy presented the applications Earthquake2020 and Oton, which were created by synergy of the Faculty of Geodesy, public authorities and civil society organizations, helping the earthquake-affected areas. Asst.prof. Dragica Šalamon, a member of the TODO team from the Faculty of Agriculture, spoke about the importance of open data for the success of digital and precise food production, traceability and biosecurity. Filip Varga, PhD student and member of the TODO team from the Faculty of Agriculture, presented the DOGWEB ZG application, intended for dog owners. Doctoral student Bia Mandžuka, a member of the TODO team from the Faculty of Transport, spoke about the possibilities, but also the challenges of personalized multimodal travel planners, while prof. Neven Vrček, a member of the TODO project from the Faculty of Organization and Informatics in Varaždin, talked about open data and artificial intelligence. He stressed that the private sector also has a large capacity of untapped data and that in the future the key issue will be public and private sector co-operation in data creation. The panel ended with closing arguments on the TODO project of the coordinator asst.prof. Ana Kuveždić Divjak.

A Hackathon was held on Saturday and Sunday (March, 6th and 7th), where interested individuals in interdisciplinary teams could work on open public sector data and create new, socially useful products (datasets, analyzes, visualizations, applications). Weekend Hackathon started with presenting projects via streaming on the YouTube channel Code for Croatia. Miroslav Schlossberg presented Popravi.To, Melisa Skender Parliamentarian and media financing from the budget, Blaženka Sečkar ESF tenders, Filip Varga DOGWEB ZG, Filip Rodik database Arches. After, working groups are held on individual Hackathon projects. The hackathon ended on Sunday afternoon with the presentation of the results of their work.

The TODO project also announced an open data conference scheduled for September 2021.