The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on Tuesday opened registration for the first edition of #PEBECHack, a series of Hackathons designed to solve problems at the intersection of government processes and regulations, and the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

The Council after its monthly meeting at the State House agreed to bring together various teams to compete on developing a tool that will promote accountability, performance tracking and transparency among key Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) crucial to the success of Nigeria’s Ease of Doing Business, at the first #PEBECHack.

“The competing teams would develop a service management solution that will allow citizens monitor, provide feedback, report, make complaints, and ‘blow-a-whistle’ about the quality of service received from key Federal Government Doing Business MDAs or at strategic locations such as airports, seaports and land borders,” the statement said.

Up to N1.5 million in cash prizes will be won, with several other in-kind prizes also up for grabs.

Interested #PEBECHack participants can register as individuals or teams on www.ebes.gov.ng/pebec-hackathon between Tuesday May 23 and Tuesday June 6, 2017. The Hackathon itself will hold over two days on June 23 and 24, 2017 in Lagos.

It would be recalled that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who is the PEBEC chair, had announced on May 1, 2017 at an event in Lagos that the PEBEC Secretariat would be bringing together techies in a Hackathon to develop a “solution for tracking reforms and getting public feedback… and enable the public to complain directly about government agencies that are making doing business difficult.”

Similarly, the PEBEC Secretariat has finalized arrangements to conduct a survey in the coming days to gather feedback from the public on challenges related to producing, trading and transporting goods within Nigeria. The survey is focused on capturing feedback for key agencies – SON, NAFDAC, NOTAP, MITI Trademarks office, Police and Customs.

#PEBECHack is held in partnership with L5 Lab, Venture Garden Group, Techplus and Microsoft. Media partners are Pulse, Ynaija and Starta.

More information about the Hackathon can be found on www.ebes.gov.ng/pebec-hackathon or on Twitter: @EBESnigeria and Facebook: www.Facebook.com/EBESnigeria. The official hashtag is #PEBECHack.  For enquiries, send email to info@ebes.gov.ng.