The group was split into four teams, which each came up with a concept to work on during the weekend.
"The teams were given a brief, which was pretty broad, and people started gravitating towards each other and coming up with ideas. It was all very self-directed - there was no-one who was 'the boss'."
The final phase of GovHack was for each team to produce a video about their project.
Ms Archibald said the teams only have 47 hours to complete their project.
"So none of the projects are really ready to go on the market. It's more about the ideas, the coding, the explanation of why this idea would be useful."
Brett Cooper, from Feilding, and Ian Tairea, from Palmerston North, were part of a team working on a project about New Zealand war memorials.
Their app allows users to drill down into the information on all of New Zealand's war memorials, including detail about individual names on the monuments.
"So then they are not just a name carved on a stone monument; they are a person with a history," Mr Cooper said.
Mr Cooper is a sculptor and a self-confessed "geek", and Mr Tairea teaches computing at Freyberg High School in Palmerston North. It's the first time either man has taken part in GovHack.
"I wanted to check it out to see if it was something my students might be interested in," Mr Tairea said.
"I'm definitely keen to bring some of them back next year.
GovHack events were held in New Zealand in Whanganui, Auckland, Hamilton, Napier, Wellington, Christchurch, Queenstown and Dunedin.
In all, nearly 500 projects were completed throughout Australia and New Zealand.
