News archive - Croatia is among the Winners of the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration 2013
The European Commission recently announced the winners of the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration. This prize celebrates the most innovative, forward-looking public initiatives which benefit citizens, firms, or the education and research sector. Nine initiatives from Croatia, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain (two winners), Sweden and the UK were awarded EUR 100 000 each (MEMO/13/503). Winning initiatives included integrated healthcare information accessible on a phone, a web-based platform for funding opportunities for firms, and a nationwide plagiarism detection system for higher education institutions. The awards were made by Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn during the Week of Innovative Regions Europe IV (WIRE IV) Conference in Cork, Ireland.
Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn said: "Innovation is not just something for business. The public sector makes up half of EU gross domestic product, so it must also embrace change. The winners today show that by harnessing new ideas and technology we can improve people's lives and help modernise our economies. We need more initiatives like these."
There were 203 entries to the competition coming from all corners of the European Union. The nine winners were selected by an independent jury 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.
The expert jury was Ann Mettler, Lisbon Council; Carlos Brazao, Cisco; Margot Pröhl, European Institute for Public Administration; Sasha Bezuhanova, HP; and Andreas Schleicher, OECD.
The prize money will serve to expand the initiatives. The winners will present their actions to replicate and scale up the initiatives at the next Innovation Convention in 2014 in Brussels.
2013 Award winners
1) The three winning public initiatives in the category 'Citizens'
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Country |
Administration |
Project |
Contact |
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FI |
Helsingin Kaupunki |
Helsinki Region Infoshare (HRI) |
Ville Meloni |
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The cities of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area have been pioneers of open data in public administration in Finland through the Helsinki Region Infoshare (HRI) service. Recently City of Helsinki opened access to decision making information by opening an interface to its electronic case management system. This gives a great opportunity to activate citizens to be more involved in public decision-making. The prize would enhance making this data more interoperable and creating innovative services for the benefit of citizens. |
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SE |
Stockholms laens landsting |
My Healthcare Flows |
Nina Lundberg |
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'My Healthcare flows' is a national open source citizen service in Sweden that contains several products, e.g. medical record information, questionnaire-, search and upload services. Products are built on open platforms, in order to be easily shared with other stakeholders in Europe. The prize money would be spent on the development of an open source questionnaire APP for children having cystic fibrosis and a module to make the eHealth service accessible in different languages. |
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UK |
London Borough of Islington |
SHINE |
Media Office media.team@islington.gov.uk +44 20 7527 2307 |
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The London Borough of Islington’s Seasonal Health & Affordable Warmth Team delivers the Seasonal Health Interventions Network (SHINE). SHINE provides an integrated and holistic package of interventions to reduce fuel poverty, excess winter deaths and hospital admissions and maintain independent living amongst older people. Our prize money would be spent on developing a peer to peer programme allowing residents to support each other in financial management and maintaining a warm, dry home. |
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2) The three winning public initiatives in the category 'Firms'
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Country |
Administration |
Project |
Contact |
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ES |
Ministerio de Hacienda y Administraciones Publica |
Aporta |
Garcia Emilio |
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Aporta is the flagship initiative of the Spanish Government for promoting the Re-Use of Public Sector Information and fostering an open data culture among the public administration and the society to promote the development of innovative solutions to grand societal challenges. In combination with the resources of the project, the prize would be spent in actions oriented to make it easier for companies to re-use public sector information. One example is the creation of a federation of open data portals around datos.gob.es, connecting the national portal with regional and local portals. |
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NL |
Gemeenschappelijke Regeling Samenwerkingsverband Noord-Nederland |
123subsidie.nl |
Henk Emmens |
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SNN is a governmental alliance of the three northern provinces of the Netherlands and the managing authority for the administration of subsidies. With the website www.123subsidie.nl SMEs are enabled to search for financing of their projects. The free-of-charge website contains information on provincial, federal and European funding possibilities. With the prize money further development of the website in cooperation with stakeholder should be financed to give a complete overview of funds, also beyond those for SMEs. |
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PT |
Agencia Para a Modernizacao Administrativa IP |
Zero Licensing initiative (ZL) |
comunicao@ama.pt |
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The Agency for Public Services Reform in Portugal is implementing an initiative to help businesses set up quickly with zero licenses. The ZL initiative responds to the Services Directive, simplifying and dematerialising procedures regarding the exercise of commercial activities in a single contact point (SCP). It also eliminates unnecessary licenses or replaces them by a simple communication in the SCP. The prize money will be used to expand the initiative to other sectors of the economy, such as exports, tourism and agriculture. |
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3) The three winning public initiatives in the category 'Education'
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Country |
Administration |
Project |
Contact |
|
ES |
Fundacion Agencia Regional de Gestion de Energia de Murcia |
SOLAR RACE |
José Pablo Delgado-Marín |
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SOLAR RACE is an efficiency and endurance competition for vehicles powered by alternative energy sources organised by the agencies for development and regional energy of the Region of Murcia, Spain. The objective is to cover the distance using the least amount of energy. Vehicles must be designed and built by groups of students from educational centres, mainly high schools and universities. The prize would be invested in an 'EU Prix 2013' edition, on two pillars: science awareness among young people and contribution to the resource efficiency objective. |
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HR |
Hrvatska akademska i istrazivacka mreza - CARNet |
EQEdu |
Aleksandra Mudrinic RibicAleksandra.Mudrinic@CARNet.hr |
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Through the initiative EQEdu, the Croatian Academic and Research Network (CARNet) is connecting 26 primary schools in rural, remote and isolated parts of Croatia and creating a network of innovative schools equipped with the latest video-conference equipment, ICT and state-of-the-art educational methods. This way pupils in these areas will have equal access to technology-enhanced schools to meet the needs of education in the 21st century. The prize money would allow to involve new schools in the project and widen the network of schools. |
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SK |
Centrum vedecko-technických informácií SR |
ANTIPLAG |
Julius Kravjar |
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The Slovak national initiative ANTIPLAG aggregates theses and dissertations from all Slovak higher education institutions in a central repository and checks their originality. Such a nationwide system is new in Europe. The prize would be used together with other funds for an upgrade to detect translational plagiarism, to expand the comparative corpus with significant e–resources, to share the experience with other Member States and to disseminate information about plagiarism, copyright, IPR and academic ethics. |
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Contacts : Michael Jennings (+32 2 296 33 88) Twitter: @ECSpokesScience Monika Wcislo (+32 2 298 65 95) |
Sources: EC Press release
- Croatia
- General
Entry created by Desiree Pecarz on June 11, 2013
Modified on June 11, 2013
