This weekend, the Groundwork hackathon hosted by gb.tc will unite concerned citizens, data analysts and developers to make Baltimore (and Maryland in general) more transparent using open data. Starting on September 28th, the two-day event will harness the power of Baltimore’s tech community and the ideas of the policy community to address issues that have plagued the city.

The Department of Health and Human services is collaborating with gb.tc and will be releasing brand new datasets at the event, including the National Cancer Institute’s Health Information National Trends Survey and location datasets for the Head Start Program, substance abuse centers, and mental health centers. In addition to health data, there are datasets available relating to all kinds of topics such as crime data, spending data and even our own Open States API, where you can access bulk downloads and an API of Maryland legislative data. You can check out the full list of datasets on this page.

Come join me and other developers this Friday and see open data hacking in action (RSVP here!). I’ll be giving a short presentation about the Sunlight Foundation and how to use our data. You’ll also have the chance to win prizes which will be awarded for the map, app, tool, or database that integrates the most layers of data from different sources. You can also win a prize for the most beautiful and useful presentation of data. Not a developer? Not to worry. You could win a prize for having the best idea which warrants long-term development.

To get a preview of the hackathon and more information about Groundwork in general, check out this video which previews an earlier hackathon that took place in August.

Don’t forget to RSVP!