Why this exists

The reasoning

A list is only useful if you can check it

We studied the programmes that already work — GovTech 100, the Smart 50, Forbes' AI 50, the Geo Awesome 100 — and the pattern in the credible ones is the same. They publish their method, they name their judges, and they tell you what the list was drawn from. The ones nobody cites do none of that.

So GovTen publishes the rubric before nominations open, names the panel before nominations close, redacts entries before judging, and publishes the funnel afterwards. If we ever stop doing those four things, the list will deserve to be ignored.

The second decision was to charge nothing. Award programmes that charge an entry fee end up measuring which agencies had budget for an entry fee. In a sector where a rural county's whole communications budget is smaller than one gala table, that is not a small distortion — it is the entire result.

Who runs it

GovTen is published by CityData.AI, which reaches more than 100,000 subscribers through its monthly newsletters on parks, mobility and local economies. That audience is why this programme can reach agencies in thirty-five countries without an advertising budget.

CityData.AI also sells software to local government. We think naming that plainly and constraining it is better than hiding behind a foundation, and the constraints are written down, enforced by someone who does not work for us, and published in full.

The independence architecture →

Who does the work