The first edition of the Public Sector Tech Watch Best Cases Awards was held yesterday at the GovTech Connect Assembly in Brussels.
The Evaluation Committee rewarded the city of Helsinki (Finland) and the Spanish ‘Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts’ for their groundbreaking emerging tech solutions in support of the Public Sector.
The City of Helsinki won the first prize in the Government-to-Government (G2G) category on emerging technologies that improve internal processes in the Public Sector. With the help of AI, their urban planning project Reimagining Helsinki generates realistic images of potential street developments.
The project creates more opportunities to inform citizens of all demographics in advance on future transformations of their neighbourhood and enables them to engage in discussions in a more interactive and accessible way. Two streets have already been successfully transformed.
The Spanish ‘Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts’ won the Government-to-Citizen (G2C) Award Category for their blockchain solution on bringing justice activities closer to citizens.
Through a Virtual Desktop of Digital Immediation (EVID), citizens are enabled to manage their judicial proceedings online and to attend remote hearings with full legal security guarantees. At the end of June 2024, more than 370,000 of those kinds of virtual meetings have been held.
Four honourable mentions
In honour of the many other projects in emerging technology that are carried out in the European public sector, also four other projects received special mentions from the jury. These are:
- EMi Smart Employment: a new digital solution from the Ministry for Employment, Commerce and Emigration at the Xunta de Galicia that offers more tailored and effective support to job seekers (G2C Category).
- AI to streamline the sorting of certified emails (CEs): an AI project to streamline the sorting and processing of certified emails (CEs) within the Italian Social Security and Welfare Administration (INPS) (G2G Category).
- eFTI4EU - Making the Future of Freight Transport Digital: A project of the Estonian Ministry of Climate that uses blockchain technology to improve cross-border freight transport across Europe by making freight logistics more secure, transparent, and streamlined. (Interoperability Mention).
- Robotic Process Automation in the Administration of Justice: a second project of the Spanish ‘Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts’ that improves the efficiency in judicial processes by using AI to automate repetitive and low-risk administrative work. (Most Holistic Innovation Mention).
After the ceremony, a round table was held in which each of the winners shared his or her personal insights into their success. Topics discussed were the implementation of a tech solution in the context of the public sector, cooperation with start-ups versus big companies, scaling up the impact of a solution to other contexts, and the motivation to go through the complexities of implementing emerging technologies.
Showing and inspiring
The PSTW (Public Sector Tech Watch) is the European Commission’s observatory that studies how emerging technologies are being adopted within the public sector across Europe. Next to its knowledge centre, it has collected more than 1,600 use-cases and many stories on the use of emerging technologies (such as AI, Blockchain, Augmented and Virtual reality, Virtual Worlds and even quantum computing) by administrations.
The first edition of their Best Cases Awards (co-organised with the European Research Centre) aims to put the best use of emerging technologies in the public sector and the most innovative public administrations in Europe into the spotlight.
In an earlier interview, Interoperable Europe Programme Manager Stefanos Kotoglou declared that the Awards are meant to serve as an extra stimulus to other administrations to adopt the solutions of the winning projects, achieving a higher user engagement, and even a replication of the laureated ideas in other regions. In sum, the awards are important to “showcase impactful GovTech projects to inspire others”.
Before the laureates were announced, Luca Tangi from the Joint Research Centre shortly presented the Centre’s report on the latest trends in adoption of emerging technologies within the European public sector.
A second and third edition of the Best Cases Awards are already in the pipeline.