GovTen
Nominate
Inaugural cycle · 2026–27

Ten agencies.
Four categories.
One honest list.

GovTen honours the ten local and regional government agencies doing the best work in each of four fields — judged blind, against a published rubric, by people who have held the job. No entry fee. No public vote. No way to buy a place.

Submit a nomination How judging works
Nominations close
30 Dec 2026
Honorees announced
4 Mar 2027
Entry fee
None, ever
Time left to nominate
The GovTen Gold Award: an optical crystal peak on a black granite base, with a raised gold medallion, engraved Public Spaces & Recreation and the GovTen lockup.
GovTen Gold Award · 2027
Supported by

GovTen is free to enter and free to attend. Production and shipping are underwritten by a small number of sponsors.

Five sponsor positions, 320 × 120 (SVG preferred). Sponsors fund production and shipping only. Sponsorship confers no influence over nominations, scoring or results, and sponsors are named on every page they appear on. Sponsorship terms.

What this is

Most awards tell you who entered. This one tells you who was best.

01

The evidence decides it

Every entry is scored against six published criteria, weighted, by two judges who cannot see whose work it is. Ambition without a measured result does not place.

02

The arithmetic is public

How many nominations arrived, how many were screened out and why, how many were shortlisted. Published every cycle. A list is only worth something if you know what it was drawn from.

03

Nothing is for sale

No entry fee, no shortlist fee, no acceptance fee, no paid tier. Sponsors fund the trophies and the postage, and have no contact with judging.

The four categories

Four fields where local government is where the work actually happens

Ten honorees in each. The three highest-scoring in every category receive the GovTen Gold Award; the other seven receive the GovTen Award.

Public Spaces & Recreation

Ten honored

Parks, plazas, trails, waterfronts, libraries, recreation programming and the stewardship of land held in common.

What counts in this category

Mobility & Transportation

Ten honored

Transit, streets, active travel, freight, curb management, road safety and the movement of people who do not drive.

What counts in this category

Local Economic Growth

Ten honored

Small business, workforce, downtown recovery, permitting reform, industrial land and the local tax base.

What counts in this category

Community Engagement

Ten honored

Participation that changed a decision — budgeting, consultation, language access, service design and trust-building.

What counts in this category
40
honorees a year — ten in each of four categories
12
Gold Awards — the top three in every category
6
languages for nominating, from ~35 countries
0 
cost to nominate, to be shortlisted, or to accept
How it works

Four stages, five months, one announcement

The process in full
Monday 5 October 2026 – Wednesday 30 December 2026

Nominate

One form, about fifteen minutes, six languages. Self-nomination is welcome and common. Third parties may nominate an agency, and we contact the agency before it is shortlisted. No fee.

January 2027

Screening, then blind scoring

Staff check eligibility and evidence, then redact every identifying detail. Two judges per category score twenty entries each against a published rubric, without knowing whose work they are reading.

February 2027

The Chair scores the top five

The independent Chair reads the leading five in each category as a third scorer, resolves ties, and signs the evidentiary file. Honorees are notified under embargo on Monday 15 February 2027.

Thursday 4 March 2027 · 1:00 PM ET

Published, in full, in one hour

Forty honorees across four categories, announced in a sixty-minute online ceremony and published permanently with the reasoning. The funnel numbers go out the same day.

The rubric

Published before you enter, and weighted

You should be able to predict roughly how your entry will score before you write it. Judges use these six criteria and nothing else.

Outcome and measured impact 30%

What actually changed for residents, and by how much. Ambition without a result scores low.

Quality of evidence 20%

Whether the claim is checkable. A public dashboard beats a press release.

Equity of benefit 15%

Who gained, and whether the people who usually miss out were among them.

Replicability 15%

Whether another agency of similar size could do this, and what it would take.

Durability 10%

Funding, staffing and political support past the pilot.

Originality 10%

Whether this is a first, or a well-executed version of something known.

Independence

GovTen is published by a company that sells to government. Here is how we handle that.

Saying “we are independent” is worth nothing. These are the controls, they are checkable, and the ones we can be held to are written into a Charter the Chair enforces rather than us.

  • No entry fee, at any stage. Not to nominate, not to be shortlisted, not to accept. There is no paid tier and no upgrade.
  • Judges named before nominations close. You know who will read your entry before you decide whether to write it.
  • Blind first round. Agency name, jurisdiction and any vendor names are redacted before judges see an entry.
  • The funnel is published. Nominations received, screened out, shortlisted and honoured — as numbers, every cycle, including the cycles that go badly.
  • A published no-sales-outreach policy. No sales or marketing action may be triggered by, timed to, or reference a GovTen award. The honoree list is not a sales input.
  • The publisher is ineligible. CityData.AI cannot be nominated and no CityData employee scores an entry.

All ten controls, the disclosure, and the gift-rule guidance for recipients

The award itself

An object worth keeping on the shelf

The three highest-scoring agencies in each category receive the GovTen Gold Award — an optical crystal peak on a black granite base, the seal engraved and gold-filled, with the agency, jurisdiction and category cut into the face.

The remaining seven honorees in each category receive the GovTen Award as an engraved plaque carrying the same seal in navy and gold. Both are shipped at our cost, worldwide, with duties paid. Neither is invoiced to the recipient, and neither may be purchased.

Honoree toolkit Download award images
The GovTen Gold Award, shown against a plain background: crystal peak, black granite base, gold seal.
Thursday 4 March 2027 · 1:00 PM ET

Sixty minutes. Forty agencies. No black tie, no table plan, no travel budget.

Announced online, free to attend, captioned and recorded. Four blocks — one per category — with every honoree named on screen and the Gold Award recipients given the floor. From 2028 the announcement settles on the last Thursday of January, beginning Thursday 27 January 2028.

Reserve a place See the run of show

Someone in your organisation has done work worth ten minutes of your time.

Nominations for the inaugural cycle close Wednesday 30 December 2026. There is no fee, and self-nomination is welcome — most good work is nominated by the people who did it.

Submit a nomination See how it is judged