CanLII Hackathon

Though others have posted about it, Slaw has not yet reported on the upcoming CanLII Hackathon. The two day event, hosted by CanLII and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law Centre for Law, Technology and Society — and properly titled Law, Government and Open Data Conference and Hackathon — will be held in Ottawa on September 13 and 14 at the Desmarais Building, Room 12101, 55 Laurier Avenue East.

According to the CanLII announcement:

The two day event will be roughly split as follows:

• Day 1 describes the public policy objectives of access to information and introduces the challenges and efforts under way to improve public access to legal and other public information. While not an officially bilingual event, participants and speakers will be encouraged to participate in either or both official languages according to their preference;
• Day 2 is an attempt to sketch out some technological solutions to improve the status quo and to actually begin to develop technological frameworks (also known as “hacks”) that could subsequently be developed into functioning software or apps.

CanLII recently announced “a freely accessible API that allows anyone to access the metadata of Canada’s largest current case law and legislative collection.” The aim is to enable developers to build websites or apps that make productive (and imaginative) use of CanLII’s store of data. The Hackathon hopes to assist in that process by encouraging some practical and “hands on” work.

A more detailed program is available here. Admission is by registration, which can be done online here starting on September 3. If you’re unable to be in Ottawa, you can register (now, I think) for “remote participation” online.