Crime Watch wins Rep. Ross Spano’s (FL-15) 2020 Congressional App Challenge

When asked what inspired the creation of Crime Watch, the student said, “We were inspired to create Crime Watch after we found that it was very difficult to access crime data, and even if we did find crime data, it was usually unorganized and was outdated. Crime Watch was created to aggregate crime data from multiple sources to ensure that users did not have to go around searching for information to see if they were safe or not.”

Over 6,500 students registered for the 2020 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 3,088 functioning apps, marking the end of an extremely successful Congressional App Challenge amid the COVID-19 pandemic. All told, 308 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 49 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, DC.

The CAC is an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host competitions in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. The Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental support. In the six years of the Congressional App Challenge, thousands of functional apps have been created by over 30,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.