Aaron Prager: Congressional Certification for Open Source

Alongside the Congressional App Challenge, students who publish their work as open source can be recognized with a Congressional Certification. It is awarded not for the app a judge sees demoed, but for the code behind it being public, readable, and genuinely reusable by other people.

The certificate recognizes Aaron “for creating and publicly releasing an original open-source application or website, demonstrating initiative, technical skill, and a commitment to open collaboration, and advancing the public good by making their work freely accessible for use, study, and improvement by others.”

The certification recognizes participants who built a functional application for their district and held a high standard of code quality and documentation on GitHub, a different bar from making something that works on demo day.

Aaron was also selected to attend the Congressional Hackathon at the U.S. Capitol, where he demonstrated BoostT1D to Members of Congress and industry leaders.

Publishing the code matters for a diabetes tool specifically: anyone deciding whether to trust BoostT1D with their glucose data can read exactly what it does with it.