Strategic Radar x+12

GovTECH hackathon project for a data-driven Strategic Radar x+12: a reproducible open-data workspace and documentation site for prospective environmental scanning, strategic resilience indicators, and weak-signal exploration.

The project combines:

• a multilingual MkDocs website
• an example public-data ingestion setup
• a RenkuLab JupyterLab workspace
• raw and curated data landing zones
• starter templates for adding further official/open data sources

Project Links

• Website: https://allsparkswiss-hub.github.io/GovTECH/
• Repository: https://github.com/allsparkswiss-hub/GovTECH
• Detailed Renku notes: information/Renku.readme.md
• Data source registry: configs/sources.yml
• Ingestion script: scripts/ingest.py
• Exploratory notebook: notebooks/01_data_source_walkthrough.ipynb

Repository Structure

docs/                         MkDocs website content
configs/sources.yml           Example data source registry
scripts/ingest.py             Template ingestion runner
notebooks/                    Exploratory notebooks
src/govtech_connectors/       Python package placeholder for reusable connector code
data/                         Local ignored data folder placeholder
information/                  Supporting project material and Renku notes
environment.yml               RenkuLab/Jupyter environment
mkdocs.yml                    Website configuration

Website

The website is built with MkDocs Material and contains German, English, French, and Italian versions.

Run locally:

uv sync
uv run mkdocs serve

Build check:

uv run mkdocs build --strict

Data Ingestion

The ingestion setup is a starter template, not a fixed final pipeline. Participants can use the example sources directly or copy source blocks in configs/sources.yml to add their own official/open data sources.

List configured sources:

python scripts/ingest.py --list

Run all enabled sources:

python scripts/ingest.py --all

Locally, raw snapshots are written to data/raw/. In RenkuLab, the script automatically uses the mounted govtech-raw connector when available.

RenkuLab Quick Start

In the RenkuLab JupyterLab session:

cd /home/renku/work/GovTECH
git pull
python scripts/ingest.py --list
python scripts/ingest.py --all

Expected raw output location in RenkuLab:

../govtech-raw

Open the exploratory notebook:

notebooks/01_data_source_walkthrough.ipynb

The current no-budget MVP path uses file-based storage in govtech-curated, such as DuckDB, SQLite, Parquet, ChromaDB folders, or search indexes. Future hosted/server databases such as PostgreSQL/PostGIS, MongoDB, ChromaDB server/cloud, or OpenSearch can be added later if the final use case requires them.

Data Policy

This project is designed for public/open data only. Do not commit raw data, credentials, API keys, database passwords, or private operational material. Raw and curated data should live in ignored local folders or Renku data connectors.

Documentation

Relevant website pages:

• Data sources
• Data ingestion
• Data catalogue
• Add your own data source
• Architecture

Current MVP Focus

The starter setup focuses on:

• reproducible source metadata
• traceable raw snapshots
• examples for several source types
• exploratory analysis before committing to a final ETL pipeline
• a pragmatic file-based MVP path before optional hosted/server infrastructure