Submit Your Nomination for the 2026 Awards

Eligibility is deliberately broad, because excellence in public service takes many institutional forms. Organisational categories are open to national governments and ministries, state and provincial governments, local governments and municipalities, regulatory authorities, public utilities, state-owned enterprises with public-service mandates, public hospitals, schools and universities, and non-profit organisations delivering public services under government partnership.

Individual honours — including Public Servant of the Year and awards within the government leadership awards family — are open to any serving public servant at any level of seniority. Self-nomination is permitted for organisational categories; individual honours require nomination by a colleague, supervisor or partner organisation, with the nominee’s consent confirmed before judging.

• No country restrictions — entries are welcomed from every region and judged to one global standard
• Work must be live, not conceptual: results sustained for at least 12 months (24 for organisational excellence categories)
• Entries may be submitted in English; supporting evidence in other languages may be included with summary translations
• The same work may be entered in up to three categories, each written to that category’s criteria
• Previous winners may re-enter after one cycle with demonstrably new results

The entry form mirrors the five judging criteria, and the most reliable way to draft is to treat each section as a question the jury is asking. Citizen impact asks: who is better off, by how much, and how do you know? Open with your headline outcome in the first sentence — median processing time, satisfaction movement, error rates, coverage of previously unserved citizens — then explain the measurement. Jurors are former practitioners; they trust audited figures, independent surveys and administrative data, and they discount self-administered polls and anecdotes standing alone. If your measurement has limitations, name them: candour about methodology consistently scores better than overstated certainty.

Innovation asks: what is genuinely new here, in your context? Novelty is judged relative to circumstances — the first integrated service centre in a post-conflict administration can outscore the fifteenth chatbot in a wealthy one. Describe what existed before, what you changed in the model, technology or partnership, and why that change rather than another. Avoid vendor language; the jury scores your institution’s thinking, not your supplier’s brochure.

Efficiency asks: what did this cost, and what did it save or release? Unit costs, productivity per case, demand prevented, hours returned to citizens and staff — efficiency evidence is where finance teams become your best co-authors. Entries that show the money are rare enough to stand out.

Inclusiveness asks: did the hardest-to-serve share in the improvement? Disaggregate your results where you can — by geography, age, language, disability, digital access. An average that improved while a vulnerable group went backwards is exactly what this criterion exists to surface, and entries that demonstrate equity of outcome carry a signature jurors remember. Sustainability asks: what makes this survive you? Governance arrangements, recurrent funding, skills transferred in-house, culture and measurement that continue regardless of leadership change. Pilots win pilot s’ praise; institutions win awards.

On mechanics: the 3,000-word limit is a ceiling, not a target — winning entries average around 2,600 words because evidence is dense and padding is visible. The ten evidence attachments should be curated, not exhaustive: one independent evaluation outweighs six internal slide decks. Write the summary field last, after the sections have taught you what your story actually is. Have one reader outside your team — ideally outside your country — read the draft for unexplained acronyms and assumed context. And submit a day early: the portal closes automatically at the deadline, and every cycle a handful of strong entries die in an upload queue at 23:58. The early-bird route before 31 August exists precisely to remove that risk, and the complimentary advisory review it carries has lifted many first entries from competent to shortlisted.

Entrant support reads every question, however small, at entries@publicserviceawards.com — the team would always rather answer early than commiserate late.