Special Category: Institutional Resilience and Innovation Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

To highlight the good practices and innovative ways the public institutions have implemented to fight the pandemic and contain the social-economic fallout, the 2022 UN Public Service Awards Programme introduced a special category on Institutional resilience and innovative responses to COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has profoundly impacted people’s lives and public institutions have changed how they operate to ensure effective responses and continuation of critical public services during the crisis. The category also focuses on enhancing resilience for future shocks through the effective use of new and existing technologies, including the development and use of artificial intelligence, open data, big data, analytics, blockchains, cloud computing, and the allocation of appropriate budget and resources and greater social protection measures.

Here are highlights of initiatives along with all the submissions in the category for inspiration, peer-to-peer learning, and possible replication in relevant situations.

Many governments leveraged ICTs and digital government for service delivery, especially in establishing and strengthening the database for health and vaccination:

• Panavac19
• System of Records of the State Sanitary Inspection “SEPIS”
• COVID-19 Vaccine Management System “Surokkha”

In many cases, specific programmes were created for virtual assistance, COVID contact tracking, vaccine administration, and testing:

• Tawakkalna Application
• Everything gurgles! (Alles gurgelt!)
• TraceTogether National Contact Tracing Programme

The whole-of-government approach was employed in mitigating the pandemic through the establishment of a focal disaster center at different levels of government in countries:

• Game Changing K-Innovation and K-Collaboration in Response to COVID-19
• Local Government Center (Centro de Gobierno Local)
• Macao’s innovative and inclusive responses to COVID

With the existing social safety net programmes, they focused more on addressing urgent needs from the pandemic in areas of food security, mental health and digital exclusion:

• Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP)

Use the filter below are to view all the submissions in the special category on Institutional resilience and innovative responses to COVID-19 pandemic.