Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications

On 8 July the European Commission launched the Sharing & Reuse Awards contest to reward public administrations that have successfully developed and shared IT solutions with a potential for wider reuse.

Reusing high-quality IT solutions allows public administrations to provide better, more cost-efficient and faster services to citizens and businesses in Europe. Such solutions can be quickly deployed in the public sector, reducing the time and cost of implementation and maintenance.

At the same time, collaboration on common solutions facilitates knowledge sharing among public administrations. By developing common standards and reusing each other's IT solutions, public administrations also improve their interoperability, i.e. the ability to exchange information and understand the exchanged data.  Finally, sharing and reuse of IT solutions can increase the competition as it enables more enterprises to provide IT services to public administrations.

Many reusable IT solutions are already available on the European Commission's Joinup platform. The site works as a repository for tools and services developed by EU countries and European institutions.

The Sharing & Reuse Awards contest is funded by the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations Businesses and Citizens (ISA²) programme of the European Commission in the context of its action “Sharing and Reuse”.

First and second prizes of €15,000 and €10,000 respectively will be granted to the winning teams in each of the following four categories:

• Successful case of collaboration to develop and provide common IT solutions at the cross-border level
• Successful case of collaboration to develop and provide common IT solutions at the national level
• Successful case of collaboration to develop and provide common IT solutions at the regional level
• Successful case of collaboration to develop and provide common IT solutions at the local level

The submitted solutions will be assessed by the Evaluation Committee consisting of the EU institutions representatives. Therefore, solutions developed by the European Commission, the European Parliament or the European Council are excluded from the competition.

"This award will put the best of reusable projects in the spotlight and we hope the prize money will help the winning public administrations to expand the reach of their projects," says Margarida Abecasis, in charge of the ISA² programme.

Is your solution eligible to participate?

To be eligible to participate in the Sharing & Reuse Awards contest, your solution needs to meet the following criteria:

• Has been developed by or for public administration(s) from an EU Member State or an EFTA country
• Has been  reused by other public administrations
• Is either an open source software or a shared service
• Its description is published on Joinup. (If your solution is not yet on Joinup, the Joinup team will contact you to help publish it after you have submitted your application for the contest).
• Its description is provided in English

If the solution has been co-developed by a private entity on behalf of the public administration, the reward will go to the public administration concerned.

Evaluation criteria

Solutions that take part in the contest will be assessed based on the following criteria:

1. Solution design: What technologies is it based on? What is the architecture of the solution? Is it scalable, extendable? Does it reuse other services / software solutions or standards / open specifications? What license model is used?

2. Solution governance: Which organisations, institutions and countries are involved in the solution’s governance process? How is the solution's development and provision financed?

3. Impact/results: How does your solution help public administrations? What benefits does your solution bring to its stakeholders, users? What is the cost / benefit?

4. Extent of reuse: How many administrations haven been using this solution and what is the extent of their use? Are there concrete plans for future reuse? How easily could your solution be implemented in a context different from the one in which it was initially developed?

5. Sustainability: How is the sustainability of your solution guaranteed? Can continuous support be provided? Will the solution be further maintained?

How to register for the contest?

To register a solution for the contest, one person (contact person) from the public administration that developed the solution or for which the solution was developed should fill in the registration form. Please note that the application, any supporting documents and solution description must be provided in English. However, the solution itself does not have to be in English.

The deadline for submitting the application is 28 October 2016.

The Commission will inform the winners via e-mail at the end of January/beginning of February 2017 and invite them to the Sharing and Reuse Conference which is planned to take place in March 2017. The official public announcement and awards ceremony will take place at the conference.

More information about the contest

Contest page on Joinup platform

Sharing & Reuse Awards Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Contact

DIGIT-SR-AWARDS@ec.europa.eu