The finalists are competing for nine prizes worth €100,000 each. The purpose of the prizes is to encourage modern approaches to public spending, which accounts on average for half of EU gross domestic product. The prize money has to be used by winning administrations to scale up and expand their winning initiatives.

There are six finalists in each of the prize's three categories of public initiatives that benefit:

1. citizens,
2. firms, or
3. the education and research sector.

Three prizes of €100,000 each will be awarded per category.

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 and easy to replicate the idea is; and how they plan to use the prize money.

There were 204 entries to the competition. Five national, 6 regional and 7 local best practice examples of innovation in the public administration were selected by a panel of independent experts, with the same panel to choose the winners. The expert jury is: Ann Mettler, Lisbon Council; Carlos Brazao, Cisco; Margot Pröhl, European Institute for Public Administration; Sasha Bezuhanova, HP; and Andreas Schleicher, OECD.

Four of the finalists come from Spain, two each come from Germany, Finland and Portugal, while the remaining candidates come from Austria, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The winners will be announced on June 6 during theWeek of Innovative Regions in Europe (WIRE IV) Conference in Cork.

For a list of the finalists, click here 

Background

The competition launched in September 2012 was open to public authorities established in any EU Member state or a country associated to the EU's research framework programme. Submitted initiatives must have been on-going for between one and four years.

The public sector accounts for a very significant part of EU GDP and employment. Nearly one in five jobs is in the public sector and total general government expenditure in EU27 was 50.6% of GDP in 2010. Given this importance, the purpose of the prizes is to inspire and highlight modernisation and innovation in public administrations.

For more information see: http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm?section=admin-innovators

Contacts:

Michael Jennings, tel. +32 2 296 33 88 - Twitter : @ECSpokesScience 
Monika Wcislo, tel. +32 2 295 56 04