Rules of the competition

Purpose of the competition and right to participate

The competition seeks reforms that support the city’s strategy and help us improve the services for and the everyday life of Vantaa residents.

The competition welcomes ideas from any department of the city or sector of the society. The competition is looking for ideas that have not been implemented yet. The purpose of the competition is to make it possible to implement these ideas. Companies and communities registered in counties under the EU’s sanctions as well as companies, communities or private persons included in the EU’s sanctions list cannot participate in the competition.

The idea must be implemented in Vantaa.

The idea must be developed by the participant. If other people/organizations have participated in generating the idea, they must be mentioned on the competition form, and their consent to participating in the competition must be assured.

Organizer of the competition

The City of Vantaa is the organizer of the competition. The city is in a position to organize the competition thanks to the New European Rising Innovative City award the EU Commission granted it.

Competition period

Submitting the competition forms will begin on April 14, 2022, at 9:00, and end on August 15, 2022, at 23:59, Finnish time (UTC+3).

Categories of the competition

The competition categories are:

1. Services for good everyday living

• Bolstering the sense of community with the help of social innovations
• Wellbeing-creating services by utilizing digitalization
• Life-long learning as support for wellbeing

2. Thriving city centers

• Preventing inequality and marginalization
• Increasing the attractiveness and safety of city centers
• Cultural and leisure services increasing overall pleasantness

3.  Combating climate change

• Low-carbon city
• New solutions for urban food production
• Promoting circular economy 

The idea participating in the competition can be related to one or more categories and subcategories. Choose the competition-form category to which your idea most belongs. The organizer of the competition is entitled to transfer ideas between the different categories.

Financing distributed through the competition

A maximum sum of €100,000 will be divided among the ideas in all the three categories, in other words, a max. total of €300,000. If, however, there are not enough proposals to be implemented in a category, the share of financing remaining in the category can be transferred to another category by the jury’s decision.

The financing is indicatively divided as follows: 30% to ideas with implementation costs below €10,000 and 70% to ideas whose implementation costs amount to €70,000 or more. The number of ideas gaining financing from the competition has not been limited.

The organizer reserves the right to change the financing sum, when required.

Participating in the competition

Participate in the competition by filling in the Webropol competition form. Applications arranged through other channels or applications arrived after termination of the competition period will not be accepted.  When required, the organizer of the competition will help in filling in the form. There is no participation fee.

The competition applications will be handled already during the competition period in order to find potential needs for supplementation. Supplementation requests will be sent by email to contact persons, and they must be answered within 7 (seven) days. The supplementation period will end at the latest on August 24, 2022.

The ideas must observe good manners. The organizer reserves the right to disqualify inappropriate applications.

Publicity and communication of applications

The applications submitted to the competition are not public as such. The innovation competition team, jury of experts, and the jury will handle the competition applications. The participants commit themselves to giving the organizer of the competition additional information about their application.

The organizer of the competition will publish the following information about the finalists of the competition:

• Executor of the idea/maker of the proposal
• Name of the idea
• Short description of the idea

Other communication will be separately agreed with the participants.

Assessing the proposals and choosing the winners

Each category of the competition will have a jury of experts of its own. The jury of experts will analyze the submitted applications and select the finalists. Choosing the finalists will be based on the applications and on the potential supplementation requests. The members of the expert juries will not be made public on a person level. The finalists’ background information will be checked.

The jury consists of the mayor of the City of Vantaa (chair), representatives of the political parties of the city executive board, one or more representatives of the youth council, as well as representatives of the city’s departments.

The jury will analyze the finalists’ applications and the potential statements the expert juries have given on them. The jury may ask the applicants for supplementation or interview them.

The expert juries and the jury will observe general disqualification principles.

The assessment will account for the idea’s:

• innovativeness
• feasibility in Vantaa 
• effectiveness
• compliance with the city’s strategy.

The jury will choose the winners of all the categories. The jury's decisions cannot be appealed.

Publishing the winners

The winners will be published at the Trade and Commerce Day event in October, to which the finalists will be invited. The winners are committed to not publishing their winning of a prize, in case they gain knowledge about it, before the official publication.

A winner is entitled to refuse to accept the financing meant for implementing the idea in question. In this case, the organizer of the competition can seek some other party to implement the idea, when agreed. 

Implementing the idea and reporting

The ideas that gained financing must be implemented by the end of 2023. An agreement on implementation will be drafted with the winners. 

The organizer’s principles of awarding grants will be applied to paying the financing, to the extent applicable.

The organizer can mentor and support the participants during the implementation of the competition.

The organizer will give more detailed reporting instructions at a later stage.

Financing granted to implementations that have clearly been uncompleted and to implementations falling behind the implementation schedule may be collected fully or in part.

Rights to the idea 

The generators of the ideas will retain the rights to their own ideas.

Confirmation of rules

These rules were ratified with the mayor's office-holder decision no X/2022. Implementation of the competition is based on these rules, and the participants are committed to these rules. The organizer of the competition is entitled to give more detailed instructions in addition to these rules.