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At a ceremony which took place in Googleโs Tel Aviv offices recently, five new and unique applications invented by five student teams from BGU were presented which all had one purpose: streamlining the technology of the services in the public sector.
At the final event, the participating projects were revealed and the Q-GO application which aims to cut down the time waiting in line in public sector branches, including offices of Bituach Leumi, the Postal Service and Income Tax, was declared the winner. Members of the winning team, Yossi Cherniak, Matan Asif, Amir Cohen and Ayelet Levi, each received a prize of NIS 6,000
The winning team was chosen by a panel which included MK Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg; Avi Cohen, CEO of the Ministry for Social Equality; Prof. Yossi Matias, Google Vice-President and CEO of Google's R&D Center in Israel; David Bareket, Vice-President and Director General at BGU; Yair Frank, Head of ICT Authority at the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel; Dror Margalit, CTO of Digital Israel; and Prof. Bracha Shapiro, Head of the Department of Information Systems Engineering at BGU.
In addition to the winning Q-GO application, the following developments were also presented:
Med-Man: an application that can save lives by mapping defibrillators which can prevent death from heart failure took second place;
100 & me: an application which aims to streamline police work took third place;
An application designed to reduce pressure in the ER; and Korepo, an application that will update residents in real time on everything happening near their place of residence, such as a rise in pollution, building, power cuts and water stoppages.
At the event MK Manuel Trachtenberg spoke of the need for streamlining the services provided to the public by the government: "The weight of government in GDP is 35-40%. It affects everything in our lives, but the government sector has remained behind and not become more efficient because as a whole it has two features that work against its ability to renew itself: the first being its status as a monopoly, it has no statutory competition; secondly, due to the severe restrictions imposed on it because it is financed from public funds "
Senior Analyst for Public Policy at Google Israel Avi Bar said: "Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has cooperated with us in an exceptional manner and the students have demonstrated creativity and innovative thinking, I am grateful for this wonderful opportunity."
Vice-President and Director General at BGU, David Bareket added: "This project is designed to provide an opportunity for the generation of developers at BGU - to create a contribution now while they are students - to improve and make the public service accessible. The city of Be'er Sheva and the University are going through an incredible revolution, the IDF is moving to the Negev, the University has established a high-tech park which is still growing, international companies have come to the high-tech park, the University has taken an important part of the process which will eventually lead to a significant contribution to the Negev, and the entire State of Israel."
The collaboration between the University and Google Israel was initiated by Avi Bar, Senior Analyst for Public Policy at Google Israel, and Sagi Langer, Marketing Director at BGU. The project's scientific director, Dr. Arnon Sturm is a faculty member at BGUโs Department of Information Systems Engineering, and the professional director is โMajeed Kassis, a doctoral student in Computer Sciences at BGU.
Participants in the joint project were BGU students who were placed in interdisciplinary teams from different departments, with an emphasis on computer science, software engineering, information systems engineering, medicine, economics, psychology, and brain and cognitive sciences.
