CivTech Round 10 Challenges

Across Scotland, public and third sector organisations have real problems they need to solve. With budgets under pressure and rising demand straining services, the need for smart and efficient solutions is ever greater and the public sector is increasingly aware that innovation is a good way to create them.

The Scottish Government is also committed to ensuring that a large part of its tech spend goes to small, innovative businesses.

This is where CivTech comes in. The CivTech Innovation Flow is designed to create digital solutions to public sector problems as quickly and effectively as possible. For you – whether you’re an individual, team or company – it’s an opportunity to tackle a Challenge, solve it, and win contracts with a blue-chip public sector organisation. You’ll build a product and a business to take it as far as possible because here’s the kicker: the Challenges we issue aren’t ‘single organisation’ problems – most exist worldwide.

In short; Open Challenges are set. Any organisation, team or individual can respond to them. Applications are assessed, and shortlisted proposals go into an Exploration Stage where they are developed further. The best go through to the Accelerator – four months of intensive work to create the solution. And through CivTech’s unique business workshop system, a business capable of taking the emerging product to the world is created.

The Round 10 Challenges include a wide range of areas: the natural world, the emergency services, the circular economy and core government services. All offer huge opportunity, and some present nothing less than the chance to completely reinvent how we do things.

Round 10 challenges include:

• How can technology be used to improve situational awareness for emergency responders, before, during and after a wide range of incidents — looking first at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service?
• How can technology identify and measure firefighter exposure to contaminants across a wide range of incidents?
• How can technology help improve the monitoring and protection of seabirds in various environments, focussing initially on the challenge of monitoring puffins above and below ground?
• How can technology make the sharing of data across organisations with separate legal obligations as seamless and easy to manage as possible, and so encourage activity that could maximise public good outcomes, including but not limited to the use of AI and automated data analysis?
• How might we use technology to better understand the supply and demand of digital economy skills at the regional level — both today and in the future?
• How can we use technology to administer, measure and predict the performance in regard to carbon of Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code projects more coherently, efficiently and effectively?
• How can technology help us deliver high-quality, scalable, public participation in decision-making, inspiring trust around ethical data use and sharing, AI, and wider public good activities?
• How can technology reduce pharmaceutical waste?
• How can technology increase circularity in the NHS Scotland supply chain?
• How can technology help make teachers’ workload more manageable, enabling them to focus on the activities that add the most value to learners’ outcomes?
• How can technology help early-stage entrepreneurs by giving them the best possible information, advice and other forms of support in a way that is fast and easy to access, helping establish Scotland as a Start-Up Nation?

Individuals, teams, pre-starts, start-ups, early stage or established SMEs, and large companies are all welcome to apply.

Proposals must be submitted via Public Contracts Scotland by midday on Tuesday 10 September.

For further details of all challenges, visit the CivTech Scotland site at the link below.