GovTech Poland changes:

- A procurement system that was only attractive to large corporations into one where a start-up can compete with a Forbes500 company. By keeping the documentation minimal and getting rid of prerequisites we are able to focus on the quality of an idea, not on the creator's market power, and thus become more start-up friendly.

- A cadre of career administrators into innovation-embracing officials. By constantly bringing them together with market professionals we ensure that the ideas take less time to diffuse from the market to the public sector.

- Small and local institutions into equal participants in the software procurement market. By hiring the winners to implement their ideas we ensure that even organisations with minimal IT staff can obtain working software solutions.

- A disintegrated, obscure process into one that is simple for all parties. We cover most legal, budgetary and logistical concerns, letting everyone focus on what they are best at.

GovTech Poland is based on lessons learned from previous editions, but its new scale makes it a standalone project. As we want the process to keep expanding each year and the year doesn't grow along with our ideas, we are at present working on both making GovTech a success in its current form, as well as laying the groundwork for future editions.

On the first front, we have finished establishing the legal and technical framework of all the challenges and are now in the process of preparing the infrastructure and data to be used by participants. We are also using the feedback gained from meetings with innovators to polish the process before the first round kicks off.

On the second, we are now gathering experiences from other countries and stakeholders from previous editions and are designing the new legislative framework. Parallel to that, we are using qualitative and quantitative methods to design the acceleration scheme and the digital marketplace system for future editions.

The process is coordinated by the Office of the Prime Minister, to which the GovTech core team reports, but success would be impossible if not for the following:

- Challenge sponsors (local governments, ministries, administrative divisions), who volunteer to become the nation's innovation leaders.

- Foreign partners and consultants (CivTech Scotland, Finnish SITTRA)

- Small businesses who we work with and consult on the programme's shape

- Citizens and NGOs providing us with feedback

GovTech is a procurement scheme, so the ultimate beneficiaries are the participating institutions and the communities they serve. They provide challenges and mentors and indicate the results of the works already implemented.

This said, the other important actor is the administration as a whole, who benefit from a better public perception and exposition to market practices.

Finally, the participants (SMEs) themselves, who can now compete with the titans, and gain contracts and experience

So far, the first edition has produced a number of working solutions for the respective institutions. One application has decreased the tax fraud rate by over 80% in some markets, while others are vital tools in the administration's operations. All institutions that participated in the first edition chose to do so again this year.

In this year's edition we are hoping to achieve similar results, but with much more complex problems. Also, while previously some of the implementations were up to the Institution's existing personnel, this time we are hoping to have the winners implement their own proposals, giving them the contract, and experience and letting smaller institutions participate. We are also hoping even more institutions will choose to get involved with GovTech next year and that it will ingrain itself in the public perception.

Perhaps, it shouldn't be surprising that the largest challenge for a programme aimed at reforming the public administration was uncertainty. We decided to take the matter seriously and after a thorough examination, and a number of interviews and meetings have discovered that while the administration is full of people with brilliant ideas, they can sometimes feel uncertain about expressing them if they do not lie strictly within their narrow field of duty. We have thus taken it upon ourselves to tackle the matter by:
- setting clear responsibilities
- defining standards (communication tools, decisionmaking procedures etc.) and convincing others to use them
- conducting a series of workshops aimed at assertiveness and self-confidence

The perhaps best call we have made was to involve outside experts to show the officials the "market" way of setting internal relations. This gave everyone more confidence and resulted in a rise in confidence, efficiency and morale.

While our project involves setting legal and technical standards it is mostly about people and their involvement is the most critical factor in the entire undertaking. We have set out to build bridges between officials and innovators, but ultimately any bridge is useless if no one wants to use it. Luckily, we have met with constant enthusiasm on both sides and will continue to work to maintain this state.

Also, we are fortunate to maintain the confidence of the private sector and SMEs. Ultimately, they are the initiative's target audience and it is with them that we continue to consult all the challenges and practices implemented. Without them trusting us enough to share their methodology and strategy we would never know what can work and what to avoid.

From the very beginning, the programme has been designed to be built upon in the future. An idea used in one ministry spread on to four unaffiliated others and a number of municipalities and hopefully one day will encompass the entire administration.

Already we can see other institutions follow standards set by us - ranging from the armed forces, through hospitals, to railway networks. We have found that perhaps the most important part of our task was to set standards and convince others they just as appropriate as the old ones, but easier. The scalability isn't just formal, however - we also plan to launch our own acceleration scheme as well as a digital marketplace platform (2019). The latter will have all digital solutions used by the administration to be modified, by anyone in the world as they please and later enrich the market with their proposals. We are also talking with our international partners and providing them with advice on how to develop their initiatives further.

After working with over 500 officials in each of the 19 ministries and dozens of other departments, as well as an untold number of start-ups and small software houses, we have seen that one word was always key - responsibility. It was the lack of familiarity with the other world's expectations, causing everyone to remain in their niche, that was perhaps the projects' greatest foe. While the innovators always need clear answers to their doubts and questions, the long chain of command does not allow for efficient replies. Therefore the only condition we set for institutions willing to participate is to designate business owners and give them enough decisionmaking power to compensate for their vast responsibility. Of course this may create tensions within the team, however, we have learned that appointing people who will once become the solution's final user to make the key decisions regarding our requirements proved fruitful, and even the most diverse teams in terms of rank, social status, minority status and experience are able to work together given good guidance and an ear ready to listen to their concerns and needs.