GovTech is a public competition that rewards innovative products and services of SMEs that address at least one of the 17 SDGs.

It therefore promoted the SDGs and their underlining principles, at the same time that it stimulated the national Startup ecosystem and dynamism, promoting a sustainable economic growth, fostering innovation and opening new economic opportunities based on the 2030 Agenda.

To participate in the competition, Startups had to submit functional prototypes of products or services, based on feasible business cases. The public then voted to choose 6 finalists, through an innovative voting process using blockchain technology. From those 6 finalists, a jury of experts selected the 3 winning projects.

In this first edition, 113 prototypes were approved and 1.744 people/investors registered on the GovTech website. The winning projects were: INFORMAT – Intelligent Forest Management Technologies; Green Salt and Healthy Life for All, which intends to use Salicornia to reduce salt consumption; and Bio2Skin, a medical adhesive-related skin injuries.

The winners won a 30.000EUR award; the opportunity to showcase their solution in the Lisbon WebSummit; internationalization support; and the possibility to work with other private and public entities, testing and implementing their product, namely in developing countries, thus revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.

https://govtech.gov.pt/

• Portugal

The model of this competition can be easily adapted to other initiatives designed to promote innovation and economic growth, namely regarding small and medium enterprises.

In Govtech, the goal was to disseminate the SDGs and, at the same time, stimulate the Startup microsystem around all the 2030 Agenda. But, competitions such as these can be organized around specific SDGs, or used to promote and stimulate other type of entities, like the academia for example. The potential to replicate this competition model is a vast one, and can only be limited by ones imagination.

The use of blockchain in the voting / investment process is also something that served as a learning process to the Portuguese government. It was the first time a governmental initiative used blockchain, so the goal was also to test the potential of this emergent technology and have some lessons learned that can now be used in future projects using this technology. Therefore, this model and the technology used can both be replicated in other governmental projects.

Moreover, the competition is oriented to small companies with a strong focus on out of the box thinking and innovative ideas that have proven to be in line with the 2030 Agenda, and some of them have presented a very good basis of scientific research and technological capabilities, with potential to be replicated in other contexts and projects.

The sustainability of the GovTech competition in itself is assured by the fact that it is a project that gathers political consensus and support, so most of the budget dedicated to the initiative comes from the public budget, namely through AMA and the Camões Institute.

But apart from the financial aspect, the partnerships created to build up GovTech have proven to be robust and have facilitated the development of informal networks that have the potential to help and even incubate the winning projects, but not only. Even the startups that didn’t won, had the opportunity to showcase their products and services to the market, and to a range of potential investors, which can open them new doors.

The projects that did won, have proven to have an working prototype with the required technical specifications and a sound business case. That, together with the award gives these projects all the conditions to succeed and be sustainable. The three winners are entitled to:
- A financial award of 30.000€, assured by AMA and the Camões Institute;
- A collaboration protocol with a public entity for the experimental implementation of the prototype, with the political endorsement of the SSAM ;
- Be granted a working space in an incubator from the national network of incubators, for a 3 months period;
- A participation on the Web Summit’s 2018 edition and the opportunity to showcase their projects in this major event;
- An evaluation of the suitability of the prototype for implementation, namely through a project proposal for Portuguese cooperation;
- Get financial support for internationalization, with the aim of deploying their business in developing countries.

By promoting a competition in which the main criteria for selection was the compliance with the SDGs, GovTech is a way of gathering innovative ideas around sustainable development, and to come up with projects that can truly have a social impact and the potential to empower different communities, also engaging them with the WSIS values and principles, that are deeply connected with the 2030 Agenda. There were projects focused on the environment, on women’s rights, on the youth, on migrants, on fighting poverty, etc. And besides empowering the people submitting the projects, it gathered everyone else in the choosing of the six finalists, which was an open process to anyone. The voting phase was actually design to function as an online game, in which the participants could play and have fun participating in all the process. The goal was to engage the community in an amusing way, while promoting the SDGs and innovative solutions. As long as they were over 18 years old, anyone could participate in the process, independently of their gender or social background. The voting was based on the virtual coins, the GovTechs, created just to simulate the investment on the projects. The process was actually very simple, after creating an account on the website, the citizens automatically had a virtual wallet that they could manage, and were able to receive badges for doing determined actions. Each badge had a certain amount of GovTechs associated. For instance, when a citizen created an account in the website he received a badge with 100 GovTechs; if the login was made using the DMK (Digital Mobile Key), instead of the Citizens Card, he received an extra badge of 200 GovTechs; if he participated in the roadshow he had another badge with 100 GovTechs; if he invited a friend to participate he was entitled to a badge of more 100 Govtechs:, 2 friends gave him 200 GovTechs, and so on. The voters / investors could later use these virtual coins to vote / invest in the projects, or pass them to another investor.