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Data Nexus – START Public Makers Lab

Audience Award winner at the START Public Makers Lab: a data intelligence platform that turns raw municipal data into actionable insights, saving about a month of work across departments.

Context

Eight weeks, three student teams, three real challenges from Bavarian municipalities. The START Public Makers Lab, run by START Munich (student entrepreneurship initiative) and Public Makers, is Germany's first student-led GovTech incubator. Challenges came from Stadt Landshut, Stadt Traunstein and BayKommun AöR. Heidi's team, Data Nexus, worked with the municipality of Traunstein and consisted of Heidi Albarazi, Cosmin Constantin Bodea and Anastasiia Korzhylova. The programme included a midterm pitch and two expert sessions, with no filler.

The problem

Administrations hold enormous amounts of data across departments, but small and mid-sized municipalities rarely have the tools to turn it into decisions. Raw administrative data stays raw.

What we built

A data intelligence platform that turns raw administrative data into actionable insights:

  • Working with the city administration to understand which questions they actually need answered.
  • Dashboards and data-analytics tools that turn municipal data into clear, visual insights.
  • Support for data-driven decision-making in local governance, with the potential to save about a month of work across departments.

Why this shows I can…

Work with public-sector stakeholders and translate their needs into usable data tools, and pitch them convincingly to an audience of 100+ people.

Result

🏆 Audience Award winner at the START Labs Final Pitch, held at the Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst München in front of 100+ visitors. Bavaria's Digital Minister Dr. Fabian Mehring and Munich's Head of Economic Affairs Dr. Christian Scharpf both sent personal video messages of support. The other finalists were DiviData (measuring the ROI of digital government projects before they fail) and FileFlow (AI-powered letter distribution that could save a city around €40k a year).

Why it matters

The lab shows that young people want to help build the public sector's digital capacity, if there is a clear way in: open infrastructure, municipal communities and a real pipeline from CivTech to GovTech.