Executive Summary
In 2017, Callum founded Ministry of Data (MoD), an initiative that built commercial and stakeholder relationships between government agencies and Western Australia's start-up and developer community. Over the following five years, working outside his substantive employment, Callum directed MoD through four public hackathons — engaging state and Commonwealth agencies including the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), the Department of Transport, Main Roads WA and the Department of the Environment and Energy — to turn real agency problems into structured, prize-incentivised challenges for local technical talent. The initiative demonstrates, well before his current mining-sector leadership, a consistent pattern in Callum's career: identifying where government intent and local business or technical capability fail to connect, and building the commercial and relational infrastructure needed to close that gap.
The Challenge
Government agencies in Western Australia held technology and operational problems that internal resourcing and conventional procurement pathways were not well placed to solve quickly — while, on the other side, local developers, start-ups and small technical businesses had limited structured access to government problem statements, agency sponsors or a credible route into public-sector work.
Closing that gap required more than a good idea: it needed funding arrangements agencies were willing to commit to, a commercial model that could sustain repeat events, marketing that could draw a genuine talent pool, and — after each event — a way of carrying winning solutions and their teams into a pathway with real commercial value. Building and sustaining that infrastructure as an independent, founder-led initiative — alongside full-time employment, and across multiple agencies with different mandates and ministers — was the underlying challenge.
Callum's Role
As founder (2017) and subsequently director, Callum owned the initiative end to end. This included preparing grant applications and negotiating commercial funding arrangements directly with government agencies; developing the project offering that agencies bought into for each event; marketing and public promotion of each hackathon; full event operations; and, after each event, the stakeholder engagement work aimed at connecting winning teams and local businesses toward government procurement and commercialisation pathways.
As the initiative's principal, Callum also set its strategic direction, including weighing whether MoD itself should move from event organiser to technology reseller or vendor.
Approach
Commercial and funding structuring
Callum built the funding model that underwrote four hackathons over five years, securing grant support and negotiating commercial arrangements directly with the government agencies each event served.
Government and stakeholder relationship management
He built and sustained relationships across at least five state and Commonwealth agencies — DPIRD, the Department of Transport, Main Roads WA, the Public Transport Authority and the (then) Department of the Environment and Energy — plus private co-sponsors including Xero, at a level that drew WA government ministers to open and close events.
Event design, marketing and operations
Each hackathon required translating an agency's real operational or technology problem into a structured, prize-incentivised two-to-three-day challenge, and marketing it to attract developers, entrepreneurs and technical talent — work Callum owned directly.
Regional reach
Callum extended the model beyond Perth with a satellite hackathon in Geraldton, opening participation to regional entrepreneurs and sponsors — a deliberate widening of the model consistent with the regional focus of his later career.
Commercialisation judgement
Where events produced strong solutions, Callum worked to connect winning teams to recognised accelerator and mentoring pathways. He also assessed — and made the call not to pursue — evolving MoD into a technology reseller or vendor of the talent and solutions the hackathons surfaced, a judgement shaped by the realities of running the initiative alongside full-time employment.
Outcomes
- ✓Four hackathons delivered between 2017 and 2019, with the initiative continuing in a reduced capacity to 2022.
- ✓Five-plus government agencies engaged as event partners: DPIRD, the Department of Transport, Main Roads WA, the Public Transport Authority and the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy — plus a private co-sponsor, Xero.
- ✓Ministerial-level engagement, with WA government ministers opening and closing AgHack 2018.
- ✓Winning solutions carried into commercialisation pathways: AgHack 2018's winning team was fast-tracked into the Plus Eight Accelerator boot camp and a three-month membership at the Combine AgTech Hub, alongside mentoring.
- ✓Regional expansion, via a satellite hackathon in Geraldton reaching entrepreneurs outside Perth.
No public record confirms that a winning hackathon solution went on to be formally procured by a government agency; the initiative's demonstrated outcome is a credentialed pipeline from agency problem to accelerator-stage solution, not a completed procurement.
Related work, outside Ministry of Data
Callum's involvement in government- and industry-facing innovation work extended beyond his own venture. While working at Empired, he was involved in running a hackathon within that business; and across his time at Rio Tinto and Empired, he contributed to a "STEM in Mining" initiative with St George Christian School, introducing students to mining-industry technology and careers. Both sit outside Ministry of Data — delivered under an employer rather than as Callum's own initiative — and are noted here for completeness rather than developed in detail.
Why It Matters
This project demonstrates the same underlying capability Callum now applies inside multi-asset mining operations: recognising where a good solution exists on one side of an organisational or sectoral boundary — a government policy intent, or a site-level operational fix — and building the commercial, relational and operational scaffolding needed to move it across that boundary at scale. In Callum's own assessment, the recurring blocker in both settings is rarely the quality of the solution; it is the internal scalability of getting a solution adopted within a site, department or region. Ministry of Data's five-year run — building funding relationships across WA and Commonwealth agencies, translating agency problems into commercially structured events, and pushing winning solutions toward real commercialisation pathways — is early, direct evidence of that capability: building relationships across government and industry, driving innovation-led delivery, and thinking strategically about how public and private interests connect in a regional Australian context.
Capabilities Demonstrated
Ministry of Data was Callum's own venture, independent of his employer at the time — not a Nausicaa Consulting engagement and not delivered on behalf of any employer named elsewhere in his CV. Callum's specific role and contribution above rest on his own account; the agencies, dates, events and partner organisations are independently verifiable at the sources below.
Sources
Public sources establish the scale and context of the events and their agency partners; they do not verify Callum's personal contribution, which is presented on the authority of his own account as founder and director of Ministry of Data.
- PublicMinistry of Data — Homepage (about, mission, EnergyHack partners, hiatus note). ministryofdata.org.au — organisation description, mission, EnergyHack partners, 2022 hiatus note.
- PublicMinistry of Data — Events. ministryofdata.org.au/events — event list, dates, Geraldton regional satellite event.
- PublicMinistry of Data — AgHack 2018 winners. ministryofdata.org.au/2018-winners — AgHack agencies, ministers, winning team, accelerator outcome.
- PublicMinistry of Data — TransportHack 2019 winners. ministryofdata.org.au/transporthack-2019-winners — TransportHack agencies, winning team, judges.
- PublicHackathon.com — AgHack powered by Ministry of Data. hackathon.com — AgHack date, location, DPIRD partnership.
- PublicWA Data Catalogue (data.wa.gov.au) — TransportHack. catalogue.data.wa.gov.au — Transport Portfolio / Ministry of Data partnership framing.
- Company-suppliedCallum's role as founder and director, his specific responsibilities, and the STEM in Mining / Empired hackathon references — supplied on the authority of Callum's own account. Not independently publicly verified.