UNDP opens nominations for Future of Government 2024 awards
By Si Ying Thian
Public sector agencies, teams and individuals can submit nominations for four categories under UNDP’s Future of Government awards until January 20, 2025.
The Future of Government 2024 awards have opened nominations for four categories to celebrate the work done by government practitioners in harnessing digital technologies to drive public sector transformation. Image: UNDP
The Future of Government 2024 awards have now opened nominations to recognise four global government leaders or agencies who are leveraging technology to drive public sector transformation.
Nominations will close on January 20, 2025, with shortlists announced on February 12, 2025, and awards ceremony on March 20, 2025.
Currently in its third edition, the awards are organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UK-based digital transformation consultancy Public Digital and the Amazon Web Services Institute.
The five awards, with only four open for nominations, are Digital Team of the year, Open- source Creation, Open-source Reuse, Leadership Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award, the last of which will be chosen by the selection committee.
The governments of Brazil, India, and the Philippines bagged last year’s awards for their digital technology solutions in national identity and healthcare.
These winners competed along with 334 nominations that were submitted from 63 countries across six continents last year, which was doubled from the inaugural 2022 edition.
This year’s focus
Digital public goods (DPGs) continue to have a strong presence in the awards, with half of the nominations focused on recognising the development and use of open source products.
DPGs are open source technologies, which could include software, data sets, artificial intelligence (AI) models, standards or content, that support the public good.
UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development’s Director, Joe Hooper, last year said that the awards are a means to see if there is “an opportunity in some cases to bring forward [the winners’] innovations into the space of digital public goods”.
GovInsider previously interviewed Hooper on the top digital government trends UNDP has observed from the award nominations in the last two years.
Recognising the diversity of solutions across national and local governments, co-organiser Public Digital has also made a call to encourage more nominations from local governments.
“We know many are doing important work on tight budgets and sharing successes and challenges will encourage discussion between them,” they wrote.