{"id":45347,"date":"2023-10-20T15:42:48","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/code-for-australia-secures-450000-for-round-two-of-its-victorian-government-program-but-theres-a-catch-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:42:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:42:48","slug":"code-for-australia-secures-450000-for-round-two-of-its-victorian-government-program-but-theres-a-catch-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/code-for-australia-secures-450000-for-round-two-of-its-victorian-government-program-but-theres-a-catch-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Code for Australia secures $450,000 for round two of its Victorian government program \u2014 but there’s a catch – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

The Victorian Government will inject $450,000 into a program that will see nine of the state\u2019s best women coders, programmers and user-experience designers come together in a bid to improve public services.<\/p>\n

The program will be run by Code for Australia, which was announced as the recipient of the funding at an event at Envato’s Melbourne office on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a continuation of Code of Victoria One, in which we embedded talented technologies into three different government agencies to redesign services,\u201d Code for Australia co-founder Alvaro Maz tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be the same principles [this year].”<\/p>\n

But this time around, all the participants will be women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Code for Victoria II \u2014 Women in Tech Program will ensure the brightest and best women coders and technologists get their chance to work alongside our public servants to improve government services,\u201d said Special Minister for State Gavin Jennings in a statement.<\/p>\n

According to the state government, just 20% of tech workers across Victoria are women \u2014 statistic the government hopes to change by backing this program. The $450,000 investment comes out of Victoria\u2019s $11 million Public Sector Innovation Fund.<\/p>\n

The six-month Code for Victoria program aims to drive collaboration, transparency and new forms of citizenship by connecting startup and tech talent with various government departments such as Legal Aid and Parks Victoria. Code for Australia also has high profile tech partners such as Google, Slack and Adobe.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s first chapter, Code for Victoria I, received $365,000 from the Victorian government<\/a> and teams built a range of new solutions, including an app that helps vulnerable people connect with legal support and reduces the time involved with client-facing tasks by about 30 hours a week for case workers.<\/p>\n

Read more: Code for Victoria innovation teams devise tech fixes in government<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

One team also helped improve a public system for scientists and citizen-scientists to collect and access \u201cbiodiversity data\u201d.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s program will again invite various government departments to put forward challenges and Jennings will pick the top three. Teams will then be formed into groups of three and start hacking into solutions from June 15, 2017.<\/p>\n

By the end of the program, Maz hopes to see more \u201ctangible\u201d and exciting solutions for government services, as well as new ways to activate citizenship.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to open up new, meaningful ways that people can contribute back into society,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

About this year’s program<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

Participants in this year\u2019s program will receive a $35,000 stipend for their six-month commitment, based on a $70,000 pro rata salary, in addition to a team budget of around $5000 to help with running events, attending workshops and other operational needs, says Maz.<\/p>\n

Applicants must complete an online expression of interest form detailing their \u201csuper power\u201d and reason for wanting to participate.<\/p>\n

Maz says the problem will be looking for people with a keen interest in \u201cgiving back\u201d and using their technical skills for purposeful work.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoosely, most teams will have an engineer, a service designer and project manager, but not necessarily,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Maz hopes a wide range of professionals including those in the corporate sector will apply for the program. Large companies like Envato, where the funding announcement was made on Friday, are big advocates for this, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis could be an opportunity for large corporates to give their people some sabbatical time off,” he says.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter, LinkedIn and iTunes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Victorian Government will inject $450,000 into a program that will see nine of the state\u2019s best women coders, programmers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,27,20,18,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}