“iGovDIGITAL Awards 2020”

As part of the international project “Government 3.0”, the University of the Aegean, along with a team of European universities and businesses, is launching the pan-European competition “iGovDIGITAL Awards 2020” to identify the best business plans with applications in the field of Digital Governance.

The goal of the competition is to find, highlight, and promote new innovative ideas and applications that, through the use of digital technologies, can improve the effectiveness of the public sector, offer new high-value-added digital services, and improve citizens’ lives.

The competition is coordinated by the University of the Aegean, specifically by the Center for Research on Electronic Governance of the Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, based in Samos. The implementation of the competition also involves the United Nations University, the National Center for Electronic Governance of Germany, the University of Agder (Norway), the University of Krems (Austria), PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Greece, SingularLogic Cyprus, and the Lisbon Council organization (Belgium).

The “iGovDIGITAL Awards 2020” is open to students or researchers from European universities and research centers and is conducted in English. The distinguished business ideas will receive:

• Guidance from international experts in Digital Governance.
• Networking with interested parties from the public or private sector.
• Promotion of the proposed solution through media and the European Commission’s network.

The winners of the iGovDIGITAL Awards will be honored at the OpenGov 2020 Summer School on Open and Collaborative Governance, organized in Samos in the summer of 2020. The competition will cover transportation, accommodation, and participation costs for the summer school.

Important dates for the competition are as follows:

Stage 1: Submission of the initial proposal (up to 3 pages) by January 6, 2020.
Stage 2: Submission of the Business Plan for teams that qualify from Stage 1, by March 31, 2020.
Stage 3: Presentation of the final proposal by participants at the Summer School “opengov2020” and awarding of the winners in July 2020, for teams that qualify after Stage 2.

During the competition, teams will receive support and guidance for the proper implementation of their business plan from mentors, experts in digital governance and entrepreneurship from both the private and public sectors. Interested experts who wish to participate as mentors, organizations or companies that want to assist in the organization, are also invited to express their interest on the competition’s website.

For more information and detailed terms of the competition, visit the website: https://www.gov30.eu/submission/

For more about the Center for Research in Electronic Governance, visit http://www.dgrc.gr