European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration
The European Commission competition to find the most innovative public administrations in Europe is still open - but only until 15 February 2013. We encourage local, regional and national public administrations to submit their projects through the competition website: www.ec.europa.eu/admin-innovators.
Up to nine prizes of 100 000 Euros each will be awarded to current, successful initiatives for citizens, firms, education or research. The prize money will be used by winning public administrations to scale up and expand their initiatives, thereby leveraging existing efforts, and encouraging further excellence and innovation in the public sector. The competition is open to any public authority established in an EU Member States or country associated to the EU's research framework programme.
Initiatives submitted for the competition must have been on-going for one to four years. The winners of the "European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration" will be selected on the basis of four criteria: the economic impact of their initiative; its relevance to challenges facing society; how original the idea is and how easy to replicate; and how they plan to use the prize money.
There is no pre-defined list of projects that could qualify. Examples could include: initiatives that provide special assistance for the elderly, eco-friendly public transport, networking platforms for SME start-ups, support for rural entrepreneurs with e-commerce tools, new approaches to vocational training or facilitating entrepreneurship of researchers.
Leaflets in the 23 official languages of the EU can be downloaded from the competition website:
www.ec.europa.eu/admin-innovators
