The first Nova Scotia Open Data Contest was held in partnership with the School of Information Management and the Rowe School of Business (Dalhousie Faculty of Management) on March 4-5, 2017.

The second annual Nova Scotia Open Data Contest was March 3-4, 2018 in partnership with the School of Information Management and the Rowe School of Business (Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University).

The fourth annual Nova Scotia Open Data Contest was held March 7-8, 2020 in partnership with the School of Information Management and the Rowe School of Business (Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University).

The Province co-hosts an annual contest encouraging youth, entrepreneurs, and citizens to use data from the Nova Scotia Open Data Portal to create unique products or solutions in just over 24 hours.

The Nova Scotia Open Data Portal was launched in February of 2016 with an aim to make government data more accessible to the public to support government transparency and openness, spur social and economic benefits of government data, and empower citizens and businesses to innovate and create with government data.