More than 50 participants from Launceston and Hobart will work in teams to make their own creations from open data made available through each level of government.

Former state director James Riggall said the competition is about developing the information on sites such as data.gov.au so it may serve a practical use.

“The idea is to get a bunch of coders, artists, designers and others together for a weekend to build something based on government data,” he said.

“It tends to produce mash ups between different data sets and apps that can automate some sort of process.”

Previous projects have included a family history search engine, as well as an app showing users where they can find public bins throughout Launceston.

Teams are competing for a share in $6000 in prize money and also have the opportunity to enter their work for consideration in the national competition. This year’s GovHack will be held from 6pm on Friday at Enterprize.