On the 5th of August the final event of digital innovations competition “NK2021” (https://www.naujasisknygnesys.lt/) took place, summarising the search for the best in this field, that lasted a few months. After 24 pre-selected finalists introduced their products live, it was determined, which solutions developed by the Lithuanians will represent Lithuania at the prestigious global World Summit Awards (#WSA), and the Best Solution for Lithuania and the Start-up of the Year have been nominated.
The following digital ambassadors of Lithuania of this year have been selected under eight categories of global digital innovations competition World Summit Awards:
- Health and well being category – #walk15(Vlada Musvydaitė), mobile application, encouraging to move, bring together communities of like-minded people, participate in various walking challenges and contribute to sustainable mobility.
- Government and citizen engagement category – My Seimas(Transparency International Lithuania) – a website, which due to the large scope of official data allows to determine the level of accountability of the parliament members promptly and easily, find out how the decisions are made at the Seimas and who participates in decision-making processes.
- Learning and education category – Angis (UAB “Visma Lietuva”) – free Lithuanian platform for programming learning, which is attractive for teenagers, highly involving and user-friendly.
- Environment and green energy category – Forest management and investment platform(FOROS.lt) – digital solution, assisting the owner of the forest to become a green investor and to have access to all the sustainable forest management services.
- Culture and tourism category – MyWonderbird(MyWonderbird) – mobile application for easy and efficient planning of a journey, based on the locations of the liked photos, enabling to discover less popular and unexpected locations and obtain the most efficient itinerary, operating on Tinder principle.
- Smart settlements and urbanization category – Service quality indicator system (KPI)(Innovations and Technologies Group of Vilnius City Municipality) – a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators of the entire scope of services provided by the municipality, enabling to monitor different services on real time and to make prompt solutions for managing the city based on data.
- Business and commerce category – isLucid (Vytenis Pakėnas) – digital tool for efficient recording and storing of “oral” consent contents on task management systems.
- Inclusion and empowerment category – Bullying inbox (Kamila Gasinska) – solution for schoolchildren, their parents and teachers for anonymous reporting about bullying at school.
The Best Solution for Lithuania has also been selected – Migration Information Centre “I Choose Lithuania” (International Organization for Migration), the mission of which is to encourage the citizens of the Republic of Lithuania to return to their homeland, and to assist them in planning the return and fluent reintegration by providing accurate, reliable and easily found information.
The title Start-up of the Year along with the monetary prize of 3000 Euros established by Information Society Development Committee and the service package for start-ups provided by association “Vienaragiai LT” went to start-up Turing College (Turing College), which trains data science analysts that are on high demand at technology companies.
The title of Young Innovators awarded to a team, most members of which are younger than 30 years old, went to freshly launched Contribee, which created a platform „Let’s evaluate and let us be evaluated“ for the creator support collecting by various means. This team will represent Lithuania at special invitation from WSA, named Youth Innovation for Europe.
“This competition is unique, because every year it brings together people, who believe in the digital progress of Lithuania and in our ability to develop significant digital innovations. We invite everybody: both experienced companies and solutions developed by Lithuanians, who are already known worldwide, as well as beginners, who only start presenting their products to the market, because every good solution has its own place in our competition”, claimed Ieva Žilionienė, the national expert of WSA in Lithuania and member of WSA global jury. “Competition “New Enlightener” provides excellent opportunity to see the new and interesting solutions developed in Lithuania, the things we welcome at home and those that are worth to be presented to the entire world. Whereas the success at World Summit Awards reoccurring almost every year, when there is at least one solution from Lithuania in the list of the winners, inspires us to continue our work. Looking at our eight winners this year I am convinced that we will achieve victory again.”Pursuing the long-lasting tradition during the final event the title of New Enlightener was also awarded to a person, who contributes to digital development, growth and bringing fame to Lithuania all over the world due to the implemented works and achievements. This year the honourable award was presented to Mantas Mikuckas, who is the co-founder and the executive director of “Vinted” – the first company of unicorn in Lithuania.
The purpose of World Summit Awards patronized by the United Nations is to find significant digital innovations created at different places of the world, solving certain society or community problems in a creative and innovative manner, as well as to share these success stories and experiences with the global audience, enabling the transfer of experience and knowledge among the countries of the world, different regions and people. Lithuanian national selection for WSA – competition “New Enlightener” (NK) – is organised by Information Society Development Committee and Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania (RRT), partners of the competition: “Infobalt”, “Vienaragiai LT”, “Bitė Lietuva”, “Tele2”, “Telia Lietuva”, “StartUp Wise Guys”.
WSA selection procedure.Tthe solutions must overcome several stages:
- National selection stage. During this stage every country selects the national best – one winner in each of 8 WSA categories. Lithuanian national selection is competition “New Enlightener”. The same rules and selection criteria are followed during the national stage as during the WSA. The national expert nominates the solutions selected for the global awards.
- WSA internet jury stage. During this stage experts from various countries of the world evaluate the candidates and select approximately 15-20 finalists at each of eight award categories.
- WSA the grand jury stage. 16 members of the WSA grand jury are eminent experts, representing all the regions of the world, who carefully evaluate all the finalists, select the top 40, namely, 5 solutions for each of 8 award categories, which are afterwards invited to a global event – WSA Global Congress, lasting 3 days. The winners of WSA 2021 will be invited to global congress, which will take place in Manchester (United Kingdom) in March 2022.
Updated on 2021-08-13