In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the deadline for the submission of business plans to the Pan-European Competition on Digital Governance will be extended accordingly. The competition is targeting submissions from the academia towards shaping these ideas to fully functional products at entrepreneurial level through a comprehensive mentoring phase with world leading experts. The Pan-European Competition on Digital Governance Ideas is organized by the Gov3.0 ERASMUS+ Knowledge Alliance project. The awards ceremony will be held in Athens, during 22 September – 25 September 2020, in conjunction with the ICEGOV 2020 Conference.
Scope
The scope of the competition is to find the best new applications or technological ideas that we can help scale into businesses.
The ideas will have to utilise new and disruptive technologies, such as Artificial Intelligent or Blockchain combined with big, open and linked data in order to improve public sector efficiency and citizen’s quality of life in general. Specifically, the ideas should fall into one of the following categories: (a) new applications or (b) technological ideas related to Digital Governance that can be scaled into businesses.
Special focus will be given to ideas that address public sector challenges & issues or provide solutions in order to address the impact of the pandemic (i.e. development of mechanisms and platforms using data for the provision of accurate information, forecasting and early warning, development of patients service applications before, during and after admission to hospital etc.).
Training material in the form of informative videos is provided explaining the technological advancements of the domain as well as the providing entrepreneurial guidance to the participants. The material has been created by the Gov3.0 project experts and could be accessed after registration.
The competition refers to students/researchers over 18. The submission period is now open for all participants.
Terms of Participation & Eligibility
In an effort to reach as many great minds as possible the competition will be open to students/researchers coming from Erasmus+ Programme countries (EU universities, including universities in the Republic of North Macedonia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Serbia, Turkey). Eligible are:
- Groups of students and researchers over 18 years of age
- Proposal submitted in the English language
Criteria for the evaluation of proposals
The proposals will be evaluated based on a set of 5 criteria that will assess the proposed idea based on:
- Innovation: the degree of new and original Digital Governance idea/ application creation,
- The accessibility of the outcome of the proposal either by citizens or/and public sector users,
- Economic viability,
- Impact and scalability and
- Team capacity: How well suited is the team to make it happen.
Timeline and Important Dates
- Preliminary Application – Round A: Deadline 6 January 2020
- Notification of acceptance – Round A: 31 January 2020
- Preliminary Application – Round B: Deadline 15 March 2020
- Notification of acceptance – Round B: 31 March 2020
Preliminary Application – Round C: Deadline 29 May 2020- Notification of acceptance – Round C: 31 May 2020
- Mentoring Phase – Round A: 01 February 2020 until 22 June 2020
- Mentoring Phase – Round B: 01 April 2020 until 22 June 2020
- Mentoring Phase – Round C: 01 June 2020 until 22 June 2020
- Final Submission: Deadline 26 June 2020
- Notification of final nominees: Deadline 31 July 2020
- Awards Ceremony: September 2020 during ICEGOV 2020 Conference
In its current state, the competition is at the Preliminary Application of Round C stage. According to the timeline, the participants should upload their initial proposal (500 – 1,000 words) by 29/05/2020 and the eligible participants will be informed by 31/05/2020. The eligible participants will receive mentoring so as they resubmit their final proposals (10-pager based on a template that will be provided during the mentoring phase) until 26/06/2020. The nominees will be revealed & informed by 31/07/2020.
iGOv DIGITAL Prizes
- First place: 5000 euros will be awarded by PwC + 3 free registrations for next year’s ICEGOV2021 conference on Digital Government
- Second place: 2000 euros will be awarded by Lisbon Council Think Tank
- Third place: 1000 euros will be awarded by University of Agder
- All the finalists will receive:
- Registration, travel, accommodation and food costs would be awarded for the final event (ICEGOV2020)
- Registration fees will be awarded (since they will be applied)
- Further coaching by world-leading experts from both the Digital Governance and the Entrepreneurship domains towards the enhancement of the original ideas.
- Contact with possible customers from the Government 3.0 project wider network of public sector organizations in the whole EU.
- Dissemination from the European Commission services.
- Contract development with interested public sector organizations.
Link for Submission: https://www.gov30.eu/submission/
Pdf: https://www.gov30.eu/iGOvDIGITAL_Awards_press_release.pdf
