Arctic policy hackathon heads to Iqaluit

Rankin Inlet’s Megan Pizzo-Lyall will be one participant in the Gordon Foundation’s “Northern Policy Hackathon” in Iqaluit on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22. (PHOTO COURTESY OF MEGAN PIZZO-LYALL)

Participants at a 2017 policy hackathon, held in Nain, work together on ways to improve policy and legislation surrounding country food in Canada. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE GORDON FOUNDATION)

There’s a pan-Arctic brain-storming session coming to Iqaluit next week.

Northerners from Nunavik, Nunatsiavut and all three Canadian territories are visiting Iqaluit on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22, to take part in what’s called a “Northern Policy Hackathon” being hosted by the Gordon Foundation.

But what is a hackathon anyway?

“You bring people together from different walks of life and you ask them to take a policy problem and think about it,” explains Mieke Coppes, who is organizing the event in Iqaluit for the foundation.

“You put them in a room for two days and let them focus their attention on one issue,” she said. “We think it’s important to have these (policy) conversations in the North predominantly with northerners.”

It’s the second of three annual hackathons that the Gordon Foundation has committed to running under its mission of “empowering the North.”

This year, that means bringing northern entrepreneurs and business owners together with government and policy experts to hash out problems and identify hurdles faced by “small- and medium-sized enterprises” in the North, and then make a list of recommendations for how the federal government can make business more accessible in northern regions.

The last policy event was held in Nain, where attendees talked about how federal policy can affect the buying and selling of country food.

More than 25 people will participate in the event.

Rankin Inlet’s Megan Pizzo-Lyall is one participant who will be bringing business policy know-how to the hackathon.

“It’s going to be exciting to hear what everyone’s ideas are and how we can make it happen,” she said.

Pizzo-Lyall is a current scholar of the Gordon Foundation’s Jane Glassco Northern Fellowship. Her focus in that program has been on how to increase Inuit-owned businesses in Nunavut.

While that study looks more at the resources of the territorial government, this hackathon will be about how to influence the federal government, she said.

“It’s pretty apparent that we (in Nunavut) have a lot less capacity and manpower than the other territories. As the three territories we’re going to be a lot stronger than one,” she said.

Pizzo-Lyall is expecting to hear conversations about trade and finance, technology, innovation, and support for groups that donate to people in need.

Following the hackathon, the next step will be to ensure the policy recommendations they’ve made are heard by decision-makers, she said.

“I’m very serious in my research—I’m going to advocate my recommendations as much as possible and in the most strategic way to make sure that the right people are listening.”

Hackathons were started in the tech world, Coppes said, when industry would put a group of people with different skill sets in one room for two days with a lot of pizza, and get them to focus on one idea.

This is sometimes done for projects like app development.

A policy hackathon works the same, but the information brainstormed is used to influence government, Coppes said.

“It’s the same concept,” she said, adding that the hackathon environment encourages conversations that make people think in ways they might not usually think.

During the event, groups will be given a subtopic related to economic development and business planning in the North to focus on for the two days.

Some groups might look to see if there is data on small business in the North, or they might assess existing federal funding for business owners to see if it’s actually accessible to northerners.

“The focus is that the participants are guiding these conversations. What northerners feel is important is what’s being talked about,” Coppes said.

While the location makes hosting this hackathon more expensive than some of its counterparts, having the policy session happen in a northern city is all part of sharing northern voices with southern legislators.

“The foundation is looking to support decisions about the North being made in the North,” she said. “We think it’s important to have these conversations in the North predominantly with northerners.”

The foundation has also finished a research paper related to the theme.