UNDP in Armenia with support of the European Union and in cooperation with the Government of Armenia has announced call for innovative ideas among the public servants. The aim of the call is to apply the experience and knowledge accumulated in the state government/management system to optimize working processes, to make public services more participatory and to ensure effective feedback and communication mechanism.
The contest is open to the employees of the RA Government and Ministry of Justice, whose innovative ideas will be accepted through online application form. To complete the online application form, the interested applicants should describe the problem they’ve experienced during their work in governance sector and propose the innovative solution. The ideas should be related to: 1) Optimization of administrative and management processes; 2) Introduction of tools for ensuring effective feedback and communication mechanisms with citizens; 3) Contribution to the transparency and accountability of government.
Experimentation
Modern institutions are more and more inclined for employment of experimental and innovative models, considering the importance of fast feedback and dynamic work. As a rule, the state sector is more cautious when it comes to innovation. Unlike the Silicon Valley, the governments don’t have clear mechanisms to encourage innovation among their employees and any innovative experiment takes place under the auspices of hierarchic permit. Advanced governments change this tendency by contributing in proactive innovative actions of public servants.
Employment of experimental models allows creating and testing new tools before their wide scale application. So, the possibility and value of failure is decreasing. Call for ideas are one of those mechanisms. They allow to 1) bypass hierarchy and present innovative ideas 2) create a safe zone for experiments and failures within the organization.
Success stories
Below you can read about some of the best innovative ideas applied in the state government system around the world:
- Lapor is a system created in Indonesia that allows any citizen of the country to communicate with the government, and share complaints or make suggestions through online, via e-mail, SMS and social media.
- Traveling entrepreneurs. This is San Francisco municipality initiative, within the framework of which the municipality engages the entrepreneurs who help to find fast, efficient and practical solutions for the improvement of public life of the city.
- Systematized services is a consolidation system for public services in England that allows the citizen to follow what public sectors are authorized and responsible for the solution of certain issue.
Application process
Applications will be evaluated by the joint commission of UNDP, EU and Government representatives. The best ideas should 1. Suggest innovative approach; 2. Be realistic; 3. Correspond to the requirements of process optimization and/or feedback maintenance.
The authors of winning ideas will get the opportunity to test their idea and design the prototype. UNDP’s “Innovation for Development” project will provide the assistance for implementation of winning innovative ideas.
The competition takes place within the framework of Innovation for Development (#Inno4Dev) program. Innovation for Development program is a joint initiative of the UNDP and EU, which will be implemented in Armenia in 2015-2018 by UNDP Kolba Innovations Lab.
The call is part of #Inno4dev: Innovation for Development project, which is funded by the European Union. The project will be implemented by Kolba Innovations Lab in 2015-2018.