Public Policy Hackathon in Quetta, with USEFP

From 22 to 24 December 2023, SIA and the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan (USEFP) held a Public Policy Hackathon in Quetta. PKR 150,000 was awarded in seed grants.

University students from across Balochistan spent three days working on public problems in teams. The strongest policy proposals received seed grants.

What a policy hackathon is

A hackathon is a short, intense event where teams work on one problem from start to finish. In a policy hackathon the output is a proposal that a government department could act on. Teams have to understand who is affected, look at what is already being tried, test their idea against real constraints such as budgets and staff, and explain it clearly in a few minutes.

The format suits young people because it rewards fresh questions and fast learning. It suits government because it brings new ideas to a department without a long procurement process, and it shows officials what design thinking looks like in practice.

How the three days worked

The hackathon moved from understanding a problem to solving it in public. Teams used design thinking to start from the people who live with the problem, brainstormed and shaped solutions, and then presented their proposals. Presenting is part of the training: a policy idea only helps if a busy official can grasp it in a few minutes.

Lessons for running a policy hackathon

For departments and donors thinking about a hackathon of their own, a few things make the difference between a lively event and one that changes something:

• Choose real problems that a named department wants help with, and ask that department to brief the teams
• Invite officials as mentors during the event, so teams test ideas against how government actually works
• Mix disciplines: law, economics, engineering, social sciences and design students see different parts of a problem
• Judge proposals on whether they could be carried out, as well as on originality
• Plan the follow-up before the event, so the best ideas have somewhere to go afterwards

Seed grants help winning teams keep working, but the most valuable outcome is often a relationship between young people and the officials who will one day be their colleagues.

Students who want to take part in future events can follow SIA’s WhatsApp channel and LinkedIn page, where calls for participants are announced.

Update, October 2026: policy hackathons are now part of SIA’s Government Innovation Lab, alongside design thinking and systems thinking for government departments and donors, which can commission one there. In 2024 SIA also ran a 3-day Policy Hackathon and the Policy Making Competition at BUITEMS, with 66+ participants per cohort. SIA’s Strategic Plan 2026–2031 (July 2026) adds a policy voice: a Social Enterprise Policy Agenda, policy briefs and an annual State of Social Enterprise in Pakistan report.