The Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister’s Office were the first government agencies which pioneered to host Call for Innovative Ideas in the Public Governance.
The call was part of “Innovation for Development” (#Inno4Dev) project, which is the initiative of the UNDP and is implemented with the financial support from the European Union.
The aim of the call was to use the experience and knowledge accumulated in the state administration system to optimize working processes, to make public services more participatory and to ensure effective feedback and communication mechanism.
The interested applicants submitted an application indicating a problem they have identified during their work and proposing the innovative solution to address the issue.
In October, 2016, Kolba Innovations Lab invited experts from the UK-based FutureGov Agency to provide consulting services on innovation in the public sector. During its visit to Armenia, FutureGov team conducted two days Pop-up Lab in the Ministry of Justice where all interested employees could come to present their ideas, discuss their concerns and model possible solutions for those problems. Additionally, Kolba Lab hold a detailed informational meeting on the conditions of the call for ideas in the Government of RA.
In January, 2017, “The Public Sector Innovation Award Ceremony” took place. UN Resident Coordinator, UNDP Resident Representative in Armenia Bradley Busetto, Head of the Delegation of the European Union in Armenia, Ambassador Peter Antoine Svitalski, RA Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for International Economic Integration and Reforms Vache Gabrielyan and RA Minister of Justice Arpine Hovhannisyan welcome participants and invited guests during the ceremony.
Overall, 23 ideas were presented by state officials. The best ideas chosen by the joint commission from the RA Ministry of Justice were the following:
- Optimization of birth certificate registration procedures
- Government Services’ online Consultancy for Citizens
- Unified online informational platform for sending inquiries to the state bodies
The representative of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia, Zhenya Harutyunyan, was awarded with a special prize for offering an idea of online request system for citizens to interact with Ministry of Justice. A relevant order was signed to make this project idea a reality.
The following ideas were recognized as finalists from the Prime Minister’s Office:
- System for optimizing internal business processes of the Government Staff
- Consumer Rights Protection Mobile Application
- Online broadcasts of RA Parliament sessions
During the award ceremony, the authors of the best ideas received awards and recognition certificates. The best project ideas will be incubated by Kolba Innovations Lab.
Our next Innovation Challenge will focus on the topic of education. If you have suggestions or interesting ideas, we will be glad to hear about them. Write us at idea@kolba.am, follow our news and events on Facebook and Twitter.
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You can see the graphic visualizations of what kind of public services and internal business processes have been redesigned to become more citizen-friendly in our Facebook album.