The GovTech Lab is a public sector team focused on encouraging the creation and use of innovative solutions for the government. The GovTech Lab helps the public sector identify challenges that can be solved with emerging technologies, engages startups and SMEs, creating innovative solutions and accelerating startups in #GovTech and #TechForGood space.
Innovation Tag: Challenges and Awards
The digital economy is booming in Medellín. So is digital tax evasion. To identify potential tax evaders, the local treasury department used to detect unregistered online stores manually. Since the use of social media for economic activities has grown exponentially, the agency has now developed a bot that automatically scrapes Instagram for such stores - and officers can use their time instead to work with store owners to formalize their businesses.
GovTech is a Portuguese public competition that rewards innovative products and services provided by Startups and addressing at least one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
It intends to stimulate the national Startup ecosystem, by promoting a sustainable economic growth, fostering innovation and opening new economic opportunities based on the 2030 Agenda.
The use of blockchain in the voting phase opened to the public was one of the perks of this competition
Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) led the design and implementation of a national poverty reduction strategy public engagement process. We offered Canadians multiple ways to share their views, from public town hall events to online discussions, to a youth contest, to an in-depth research project. The engagement process successfully reached thousands of Canadians in a short time frame on a low budget. The plan is now used as a Government of Canada model for effective civic…
The promotion of competition has been identified as one of the major challenges of the Public Procurement System in Colombia. Despite its importance, it was only in 2019 that a tool allowing to effectively monitor the participation of the interested parties on the bidding processes was developed and implemented by the Colombian Procurement Agency. Thanks to this tool, participants are able to diagnose flaws, and make suggestions or requests for improvements.
The Louisville Metro Badge Program rewards employees for tasks like creating an open dataset, crowdsourcing information from citizens or collaborating with other departments on projects. There’s a tiered reward system for civil servants who participate, with prizes ranging from LinkedIn recommendations to recognition at a city-wide awards ceremony.
Latvia’s E-index is the first national-level initiative helping central government institutions and municipalities to evaluate and recognize their level of digital transformation, foreseen solutions and learn from other institutions. This enables and motivates the development of the e-environment. Within the spirit of positive competition, the common goal is raising awareness of digital transformation, learning about policy and tools, and increasing quality and accessibility of services to…
The Northern Ireland (NI) Public Sector Innovation Lab has organised a hackathon, “Hack the Pain,” to address these needs of an underserved group: people with persistent pain. These individuals need for better information services for self-management, and the projects that emerged from the hackathon include a virtual reality app for mindfulness, a pain tracking app and a website of information on pain management techniques.
The air-purifying billboard is a Macedonian innovative prototype that aim to clean the ambient air mainly polluted from traffic. There are currently 2 pilot billboards implementing this technology.
The vacuum cleaning based solution, if set to all 820 billboards in Skopje can reduce air pollution by up to 20%, as the filter can purify 2.5 million cubic meters of air per month. The filters can absorb the PM10, PM 2.5 and other harmful particles. Around 200,000 bus passengers and 150,000 more…
The Artech project invites artists, entrepreneurs, and developers to use public data as a "raw material" for works of art based on traditional arts or digital media. Being a well-known and respectable medium to broad audiences, we see art, as an original and fresh way to expose new audiences to the importance of open data and its relevance. This is the first time that a government agency in Israel has directly sponsored a creative and innovative experience of this kind.