EuroVisor wins Garage48’s e-Justice idea hackathon

25.10.2017. Having seen the presentations at Garage48’s idea hackathon held within the framework of the e-Justice related conference ’Futur-e-Justice’ which took place on October 19-20 in Tallinn Creative Hub (Kultuurikatel), the jury decided on EuroVisor as the winning team. EuroVisor is a convenient application for travellers which considers both the person’s country of origin and the country of destination and enables a handy comparison of legislation in different states.

Approximately 200 justice leaders, visionaries and IT developers across Europe visited Tallinn to attend the two-day e-Justice related conference by the Estonian Ministry of Justice and the idea hackathon by Garage48. On day one of the conference, e-Justice leaders and e-governance forerunners discussed ways to make the justice domain easier to access for Europeans, applying principles familiar in the digital world; on day two, decisions were adopted as to substantive onwards directions in the domain. As a result of team-based brainstorming and idea hacking simultaneously hosted by Garage48, practical technical solutions were set up to further develop the e-Justice field.

“Usually, hackathon participants include technically skilled people that really want to apply their skills in making something that matters actually happen; however, Garage48 stands out in involving a multitude of legal practitioners that have substantive knowledge in terms of problematic areas in the current e-Justice environment,” explained Rain Rannu, a jury member and co-founder of start-up Fortumo.

After a prolonged discussion, the five-member jury decided to name as the winner the EuroVisor team whose hackathon-based brainstorming session resulted in an application for travellers which enables convenient automated comparison of legislation in different countries. The idea is that legislation in fact concerns individuals on a day-to-day basis, although one does not have to think about it all the time. As, however, laws are slightly different across different nations, the application helps highlight this even if you are not specifically looking for related information. “It was indeed a difficult task to select the winner because the teams were tackling real problematic issues present in the e-Justice system and the discernible benefit of implementing these ideas is almost tangible,” said Rannu. “The winning idea stood apart from the rest as usable across Europe by virtually every often-traveling citizen of each member state. It’s original and so simple; an application like this should really have been put in place a while ago,” Rannu added.

In addition to the winner, the jury announced a number of special prizes. The DraftHUB team developed the notion of a virtual workplace for legislators and other legal practitioners, enabling multiple people to work on a document simultaneously and doing away with the need to e-mail back and forth files with proposed changes. The team says that next to its practical nature, efficiency, and transparency, the application is also characterized by cost effectiveness, enabling users to save money. The jury awarded the team with two special prizes: a place in the TOP 100 at Ajujaht (Batue in English), Estonia’s largest competition of business ideas – which, in the case of a successful performance, entails the chance to win the competition’s current season –, and a Startup Estonia Cyber Security special prize.

Peter the Lawbot aka an e-Justice mobile application gained the jury’s attention with its potential for international success and the team was awarded a scholarship under the “Erasmus for young entrepreneurs” program, providing the team members with the opportunity to serve for 1 to 6 months as an intern with an experienced undertaking acquiring skills required to set up a company and/or run a thriving outfit. Even if there is a boatload of information relating to legal assistance, the application’s advantages include simplicity and compactness which brings the complex legal domain closer to the individual while at the same time rendering it easier to understand.

The hearts of the visitors of the conference were won by DraftHUB – the holder of two special prizes – and thus the team also acquired the title of the Favourite of the Audience.

The e-Justice idea hackathon was instituted by the Estonian Ministry of Justice and implemented with the help of Garage48 as funded by the European Regional Development Fund using means of the EU structural funds’ support scheme “Raising Public Awareness about the Information Society”.

For conference related information, contact:

Katrin LuntHead of Public RelationsRepublic of Estonia Ministry of JusticeTel. (+372) 527 6806[email protected]

For idea hackathon related information, contact:

Mari HanikatProject ManagerGarage48Tel. (+372) 5667 7510[email protected]