Published United Nations Public Service Awards 2021
Submission Rules and Guidelines
The United Nations Public Service Awards (UNPSA) recognizes excellence in public service at the local, regional, and national levels. It was launched in 2003 to promote and support innovations in public service delivery with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UNPSA is focused on promoting and recognizing transformative action that promotes creativity and innovation in public service delivery and the work of public sector institutions to enhance effectiveness, transparency, and inclusiveness to leave no one behind.
The UNPSA is managed by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), through its Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG), in collaboration with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women).
PURPOSE
The purpose of the UNPSA is to promote and reward innovation and excellence in public services in support of the realization of the SDGs and the principle of leaving no one behind, which is at the core of the 2030 Agenda. It takes into account the various development levels of countries while reflecting the universal nature of the SDGs.
Through a global competition that promotes the role, professionalism, and visibility of public service, the UNPSA aims to:
✔ Highlight innovations in governance
✔ Reward excellence in the public sector
✔ Motivate public servants to further promote innovation
✔ Enhance professionalism in the public service
✔ Raise the image of public service
✔ Collect and disseminate successful practices for possible replication
ELIGIBILITY
✔ The Award is open to all public-sector institutions at the national, sub-national and local levels from all UN member states. In the case of partnerships (including civil society, private sector, academia, etc.), the nominee must be a public-sector institution.
✔ Both self-nomination and nomination by third parties are accepted. Applications should be made by an organization.
✔ The initiative must be innovative and relevant to one of the UN Public Service Awards categories 3
✔ The initiative must have been implemented for a minimum of two years, with demonstrated and documented impact.
✔ The application must be duly filled out.
✔ The submission must include all the required supporting documents.
✔ The initiative must not have already received a UNPS Award.
✔ To avoid conflict of interest, the initiative must not be implemented by the United Nations System.
CATEGORIES
The objective of the UNPSA is to recognize efforts that advance effective, efficient, transparent, accountable, innovative, and citizen-centered public governance, administration, and services for sustainable development, in line with SDG 16.
Effective, accountable, and transparent institutions are essential to achieving all the 17 Goals and to ensuring efficient and quality public service delivery. They play a critical role in efforts to enhance access to services such as quality education (SDG 4), healthcare (SDG 3), water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), as well as efforts to leave no one behind, as through enhancing opportunities for decent work (SDG 8), achieving gender equality and empowering girls and women (SDG 5 ), tackling inequality (SDG 10), and promoting partnerships (SDG 17).
While targeted efforts to meet individual Goals are needed, the highly integrated nature of all the Goals calls for institutional frameworks and mechanisms that work to foster collaboration and harmonization between government agencies, policies, and with other stakeholders to achieve the SDGs. At the same time, new and burgeoning forms of innovation, such as, but not limited to, ICTs, can be leveraged by public sector institutions to provide engaging and efficient ways to reach citizens and meet development objectives across all areas.
With this in mind, four categories (below) have been selected for the 2021 UNPSA. Submissions under each category should be aligned with the 2030 Agenda, demonstrating their relevance to the SDGs and should be innovative, demonstrating positive impact, sustainability, adaptability, and stakeholder engagement (see ‘Evaluation Criteria’ for more details).
Category 1: Fostering innovation to deliver inclusive and equitable services for all including through digital transformation
The category on fostering innovation to deliver inclusive and equitable services for all promotes innovative ways to increase access to quality and affordable public services, especially to those living in poverty and the most vulnerable. Delivering inclusive and equitable services requires many public sector institutions to both reform and transform their service delivery mechanisms so as to enhance effectiveness and efficiency in public service delivery. This can be through the use of a digital-by-design approach and/or the promotion of digital transformation which adopts innovative approaches and applications of existing and frontier technologies aimed at enhancing public service delivery and public administration while also taking into consideration affordable access to digital networks. A focus on user needs in public service design and delivery rather than on technology solutions and on inclusion, equity, integration, and diversity sit at the heart of delivering people-centric services.
Category 2: Enhancing the effectiveness of public institutions to reach the SDGs
The category on enhancing the effectiveness of institutions to reach the SDGs promotes institutional frameworks that enhance transparency and accountability as well as facilitate harmonization and collaboration in government policies. This category aims to recognize efforts to enhance the effectiveness of institutions in pursuit of the SDGs, underscoring the linkages among many of the SDGs via integrated policies and development plans. The category also focuses on enhancing transparency and accountability of public institutions, including through efforts to enhance open government data approaches, participatory decision making, and engagement. Efforts to enhance the effectiveness of institutions to reach the SDGs may also be harnessed through digital transformation which adopts strategic approaches and applications of existing and frontier technologies aimed at enhancing public administration, including through promoting interoperability among institutions and enabling government platforms’ use as communication and consultation tools.
Category 3: Promoting gender-responsive public services to achieve the SDGs
The category on promoting gender-responsive public services to achieve the SDGs promotes innovative public policies and services that address the specific needs of women and girls. Gender-responsive public services play a critical role in reducing poverty and inequality and advancing the rights of women and girls. These services require enabling policy and legislative frameworks, institutional structures, and administrative capacities for their full implementation. They also require leveraging digital and new technologies to ensure innovation, effectiveness, and accessibility, as well as building digital literacy and skills. Initiatives should address gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at all stages of planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.
Category 4: Institutional preparedness and response in times of crisis
This category aims to recognize efforts to ensure rapid and effective institutional responses and the continuation and enhancement of public service delivery in times of crisis. Strengthening resilience by ensuring that people, societies, and institutions have the resources, capacities, and knowledge to limit, anticipate, absorb, and adapt to shocks, underpins all the SDGs. Governments are responsible for pursuing policies to build resilience and assist those most affected. Crisis preparedness is central to ensuring that governments can act quickly and effectively during crisis, such as those brought on by natural disasters, climate change, health pandemics, conflict, economic shocks and more. Ensuring the continuation of public services and the ramping up of service delivery to the most vulnerable in an effective and efficient manner is critical. Preparedness requires strategic planning and forecasting, effective use of new and existing technologies, including through the development and use of artificial intelligence, open data, big data, analytics, blockchains, machine learning, cloud computing and the Internet of Things, and the allocation of appropriate budget and resources. Initiatives should address how institutions have responded to crisis through the provision, enhancement and adaptation of services.
HOW TO APPLY
Who can nominate? Public sector institutions, schools of public administration, UN agencies (only for initiatives which they have not supported), universities, non-governmental organizations and private sector entities.
Who can be nominated? All public institutions at the national, sub-national, and local level from all UN member states are eligible to apply. In the case of public-private partnerships, the lead nominee must be a public-sector institution.
What is the application process? Application can only be submitted through the Online Application Form at the UNDESA/DPIDG website https://publicadministration.un.org/unpsa/en/
For technical assistance, please contact the UNPSA team by email UNPSA@un.org
The deadline for submitting an application is November 18th, 2020.
The Online Application Form must be fully completed. All fields must contain the requested information. In the event that any field is left blank, or if the answer does not directly correspond to the question asked, the initiative will not be evaluated.
The applications can be made only in one of the six UN official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish). However, it would be preferable, if possible, that applications be submitted in one of the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat, which are English and French. Application and/or supporting documents in a language other than one of the six UN official languages will not be accepted.
What supporting documents are needed?
1. Evaluation Report: An internal or external evaluation/audit report or similar documentation of the initiative is required.
The evaluation report must include:
✔ Executive Summary: Brief summary of the report
✔ Scope: What the evaluation aims to measure
✔ Methods: How the evaluation is conducted by explaining methodology used
✔ Findings and recommendation: Main findings of the evaluation and recommendations
2. (Optional) Up to five additional supplementary materials can be provided to demonstrate and highlight the initiative’s impact and outcome. This could be in the form of case studies, programme or policy briefs, project documents, newspaper articles or publications, outreach materials, videos, selection for other awards, etc.
If more than five supplementary materials are provided, evaluators will choose five at random to review. Therefore, it is within the nominees’ interest to limit material to five. Supplementary materials must be in one of the six UN official languages (by way of translation, subtitles, etc.) to be considered.
