The heads of ministries and other departments responsible for posting and updating open data on the Open Data Portal of the Republic of Uzbekistan, heads of representative offices of international organizations, international experts and local experts in the field of open data, IT specialists, teachers and students of Inha University in the city of Tashkent, as well as representatives of the media have taken in the conference.

It was being noted the timely and high-quality fulfillment of the tasks set by the country's leadership for the further development of open data in the Republic of Uzbekistan, in particular the implementation of the Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan dated April 9, 2019 No. PD-4273 “On Additional Measures to Ensure Openness and transparency of public administration, as well as increasing the statistical potential of the country” among the goals of conducting the international conference.

Within the framework of the event, Farkhod Ibragimov, IT Park CEO, noted the importance of open data as follows: “When we had an appointment on incubation and acceleration programs at the IT-Park, due to the insufficient quantity and quality of the information provided in the projects, we were not sure how to evaluate these teams, so we hope that participants will be able to create IT products using Open Data thanks to the first Central Asian hackathon open data - “Open Data Challenge 2019”, and the first unicorn companies will appear in Uzbekistan one day thanks to new open data.We must see that Open Data is needed not only for IT companies, but also for all citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan, so that everyone can get the information he needs”.

Also, Farkhod Ibragimov made the announcement of the future hackathon titled “Open Data Challenge 2019” - the annual competition for developing applications using open data.

Hackathon “Open Data Challenge 2019” is a competition of startups aimed at developing Open Data in information technology, entrepreneurship and the economy of Uzbekistan.

Abdulakhad Kuchkarov, IT-Park CIO, told the details of this contest: “The objectives of conducting a hackathon on open data are development of a professional community in the subject area, relevant competencies of representatives of state and regional authorities, as well as participants of the hackathon, realization of the social and economic potential of state and regional open data.“Open Data Challenge 2019” will increase the interest of representatives of state authorities and local governments in the disclosure of information in the open data form, help to improve the quality of preparation and publication of open data sets, as well as the development of the market of applications and services developed on the basis of information posted in the open data form”.

This event was organized by the State Statistics Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan in collaboration with the World Bank, the Technology Park of Software Products and Information Technologies (IT Park), the OSCE Project Coordinator in Uzbekistan, the National Project Management Agency under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Ministry for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications.