How to run a federal hackathon

Running a federal hackathon is a low-cost, high-impact way to bring private sector solutions to government applications and services.

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon is a tech industry event where teams and/or individuals come together to rally around solving a specific problem through technology. They are short-term (from one to a handful of days), intending to spark ingenuity and collaboration to produce fast, testable solutions. Successful hackathons can spark new innovations that can be immediately applied to solve the problem at hand.

In July 2024, GSA, in partnership with four additional federal agencies and seven private sector companies designed and executed the first Federal AI Hackathon. This event applied the talents of more than 100 participants and dozens of teams to five federal websites to reimagine them for “AI as a user.” Their insights accelerated delivery of improved websites for each agency.

Five tips for a successful hackathon

The following five tips will help you design your own successful event.

1. Multicity, Multiday, Multichallenge… choose one.

You can hold your hackathon in multiple cities, over multiple days, to solve multiple challenges, but each scenario will introduce additional complexity in planning and executing. We recommend keeping it as simple as possible.

Multicity events

• Adding multiple cities can marginally increase your participant count, but it adds complexity to your planning.
• If you’re offering a hybrid or multi-city event, be mindful that in-person participants may have an advantage over those that are being judged remotely.
• Keep events to a single time zone.

Multiday events

• Consider how you will handle the hackathon site overnight. Securing overnight site access to a federal building for the general public is difficult and can present issues of fairness.
• Be mindful that not all participants may have the same options for lodging between operating hours. For example, a corporate team might retreat to their local offices overnight, whereas a team of out-of-town college students may have no viable options between operating hours. Try to make the most equitable decision for all participants.

Multichallenge events

• Understand that multichallenge events are essentially multiple, parallel events. This means multiple participant groups, judging criteria, judges, SMEs, legal approvals, and prize pools.
• Consider issues of fairness if participants are randomly assigned to different challenges.

2. Consider team composition and allow for diverse teams

• Give participants options for how teams are assigned. Options can include: self-forming, random assignment, and competing individually. Multiple options encourages a broad source of participants. Tech companies and contracting firms are not likely to participate if their members are randomly assigned. Similarly, college students and early career individuals are less likely to participate if they must do so in isolation. Lastly, there are talented individuals who work better alone under time pressure. Allowing teams who chose to self-form is superior to mandatory randomized teams.
• Cap team size at about five participants.
• Design an outreach program that reaches each targeted participant group.
• Do not allow prize-eligible and prize ineligible people on the same team.
• Determine if your event will allow participants who are not eligible to receive prize money. These include on-the-clock federal employees and non-permanent U.S. residents.
• Assume a roughly 50% no-show rate from registrations (though this may vary with a large prize pool, or an application/acceptance process). Be prepared to reassign participants because cancellations may come from individuals, complete, or partial teams.

3. Engage with legal early

• Know the rules and regulations that you must follow. Federal hackathons have a broad array of rules and regulations to abide by. Not the least of these is the COMPETES Act and 15 §USC 3719 - Prize Competitions. There are other regulations applicable to partnering with private sector co-sponsors and federal agencies that may apply as well.
• Develop a final “Official Rules” document before you solicit participation. GSA’s Federal AI Hackathon Official Rules is a good example that highlights many potential issues.
• Get feedback and recommendations from your agency’s legal counsel. Each event will present its own unique legal issues, each of which will require an opinion from agency counsel.

4. Finalize Your challenge and co-sponsors before announcing

• Resist the temptation to announce your hackathon before you have the event topic finalized. Your challenge statement may change as you develop your official rules, finalize co-sponsors, and develop judging criteria.
• If your event seems too abstract, or lacking in detail, potential participants may not register. A well-developed challenge statement will help you attract private sector co-sponsors and participants with a concrete and detailed event challenge statement.

5. Meaningfully engage with participants

• Assign a dedicated individual to engage with participants before the event, as it will take a significant amount of time. Additionally, a single point of contact is more likely to provide consistent answers to frequently asked questions.
• Start marketing your event about 1-2 months before event day. This strikes the correct balance between garnering enough registrants and maintaining excitement and engagement. Additionally, be prepared for a rush of registrants and decide on a waitlist/confirmation policy before opening registration.
• Prepare a message calendar to confirm registration, engage participants in the challenge, and reduce the need for day-of logistics. These might include:
  • Electronically signing waivers
  • Content that gets the participants thinking about the challenge, including direct engagement with SMEs via a collaboration platform and/or webinars
  • Virtual office hours for general event Q&A
• On the event day, strongly consider leveraging a communications platform like Slack (or similar). This can be used to:
  • Provide event announcements
  • Foster team collaboration
  • Provide fair engagement and access to SMEs for challenge related questions
  • Provide technical support and identify site-wide issues
  • Collect submissions
  • Vote on “People’s Choice” award submissions, if your event includes such a prize

To be successful in your hackathon, you’ll need to align nearly every facet of your organization, including your IT, legal, communications, facilities management, vendor relations, and intergovernmental affairs teams. By following these principles, your agency will be well on its way towards a successful hackathon!