The beginning of this year was very successful for the community of Lithuanian digital innovations. It was announced that the list of winners of global digital innovation competition World Summit Awards (wsa-global.org), promoted by the United Nations features two solutions developed by Lithuanians this year. Exclusive attention of the global jury was given and the awards of the winners were granted to platform “Angis” (angis.lrt.lt) dedicated to teaching programming to teenagers in the learning and education category, and to political data analysis and accessibility solution ManoSeimas.lt in government and citizen engagement category.
Members of the grand jury of WSA representing different regions of the world and countries have carefully reviewed the projects which reached final of the competition and after hearing the replies to the arising questions from their developers have selected the winners: 5 best digital solutions in 8 categories. Among 40 winners from 29 countries there were even two representatives from Lithuania nominated. This year the biggest number of solutions from all over the world were competing under the education and learning category and the competition was won by “Angis” created UAB “Visma Lietuva”. It is a free Lithuanian attractive and involving programming platform for teenagers, which allows to program using one of the most popular programming languages in the world “Python”. Under the government and citizen engagement category the virtual title of the winner was awarded to solution ManoSeimas.lt developed by Transparency International Lithuania. It is a website, which uses big data analysis allowing to find out in fast and simple manner, how accountable are the Parliament members, how the decisions are made at the Seimas and who participates in their adoption.
“The changes in life caused by the pandemic undoubtedly prompted the development of digital solutions. Nevertheless, equal amount of attention was focused on other problems of the societies, such as mitigation of the climate change outcomes, improving the accessibility of education and health services, increasing the government transparency, ethical business, sustainable urban development,” stated Ieva Žilionienė, who has been Lithuanian national expert for WSA and member of the grand jury for many years. “Just like every year we look for digital products and solutions that create a real change, assisting to practically implement the Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations, in various regions of the world. It is a great joy that Lithuanian success is repeated annually, since it proves that Lithuanians are excellent in creating not only successful, but also significant digital innovations, the benefit and impact of which is recognised by experts from all over the world”.
“This award is a great sign of recognition for our team, since we have put a lot of effort and worked intensively to provide every child in Lithuania with an opportunity to study programming completely free. We currently have a thousand of happy schoolchildren, who got acquainted and interested in programming because of the assistance provided by “Angis”, lots of motivated teachers, who use our platform during the computer science lessons, whereas this international recognition will contribute to promoting the name of Lithuania globally. It encourages us not to stop and to further the positive changes in Lithuanian education,” told Mantas Urbonas, Chief Executive Officer of UAB “Visma Lietuva” and author of “Angis”.
Chief Executive Officer of Transparency International Lithuania (TILS) Sergejus Muravjovas claimed that the award their organisation has received is a huge encouragement to continue the commenced work related to ensuring more transparency in Lithuanian politics. “We have started developing the solution ManoSeimas.lt ten years ago under the initiative of Ignas Rubikas, who was studying in England at that time. I should confess, that back then we could only dream about that our website would be used by more than 140 thousand people for finding out more information about the politicians, whereas the platform itself would become a significant tool of the public policy. For example, consistent improvement works on ManoSeimas.lt enabled us in cooperation with our colleagues at the Seimas to make our Parliament one of the most transparent in the world. I believe that ManoSeimas.lt is an excellent example of the data possessed by the public sector and the benefit it may generate. I would be very happy, if WSA award received by us would encourage our colleagues to create their own stories of success and to make even more important data easily accessible to the society”, stated S. Muravjovas.
WSA winners will meet virtually at WSA Global Congress, which will take place in Vienna at the end of March 2022. This global scale event will assemble the developers and visionaries from various regions and countries and during it the winners of WSA will introduce their solutions, meet the international experts and mentors, participate in the trainings and will receive the awards during a gala ceremony to honour the winners.
World Summit Awards is a world initiative, the purpose of which is to discover and to promote the best digital innovations in the world, contributing to Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations. Lithuanian national selection for these world awards takes place within the framework of digital innovation competition ”Naujasis knygnešys”, the new stage of which will commence in spring 2022.
World digital innovation competition WSA selection procedure:
- National selection stage: every country selects the national best solutions – up to 8 winners, one winner for each of 8 competition categories. Lithuanian national selection is competition “Naujasis knygnešys” and it follows the same rules and selection criteria as WSA. The national expert of the country nominates the winners of the national competition for the global competition.
- WSA internet jury stage: during this stage experts from various countries of the world remotely evaluate the candidates and select approximately 15-20 finalists at each of eight competition categories.
- WSA the grand jury stage: 30 members of the WSA grand jury are prominent experts, representing all the regions of the world, who carefully evaluate all the finalists and during a transparent, open and democratic procedure select the top 40, namely, 5 solutions for each of 8 award categories, which become the WSA winners of the respectful year.
Updated on 2022-03-01