2026 Community Voting Results Are In

ISSUE: Montevideo faces a structural gap where robust electoral participation contrasts with low voluntary engagement, as citizen input remains disconnected from the city's internal, goal-setting Management Commitments System, leading to low trust and limited collaborative governance.

IDEA: NEXO integrates citizen participation and government management by allowing residents' proposals to become formal, incentivized goals within Montevideo's established, results-based Management Commitments System, effectively opening an existing institutional framework to the community.

IMPACT: NEXO has already generated early impact through community co-design and prototyping, leading to its formal integration into Montevideo's Strategic Plan and activating the city's robust management system to transform citizen-driven proposals into traceable municipal goals, with future plans to measure trust and participation.

ISSUE: 65% of Girls in Jos are leaving school due to poverty, early marriage, gender-biased norms, and weak systems for tracking and responding to absenteeism.
IDEA: To keep girls in school by creating a shared accountability system that links attendance tracking, community norm change, policy enforcement, media advocacy, and mentorship.
IMPACT: The project achieved 60% retention rates for at-risk girls, encouraging the government to adopt its scalable methodology. This fostered a cultural shift towards robust policy enforcement and systemic tracking of out-of-school girls.

ISSUE: Governments work hard on service improvement but often lack tools to see and measure the hidden cognitive, emotional and time burdens people face.

IDEA: Sludge Audits apply behavioural science to diagnose where people struggle, why it happens and how to redesign services more effectively.

IMPACT: Governments have reduced friction, simplified processes, improved completion and built capacity to use behavioural evidence in everyday service reform.

ISSUE: Connect the local economy actors (MSMEs and Family Farmers) to the Value Chain generated by the Paraguay's School Feeding Program "Zero Hunger".

IDEA: Interinstitutional public‑procurement strategy that integrates Family Farmers and MSMEs into the school feeding value chain through mandatory local sourcing quotas, simplified contracting, digital transparency platforms, and collaborative governance mechanisms.

Impact: From August 2024 to December 2025, more than 50 million dollars were allocated to MSMEs and Family Farmers, enabling over 500 MSMEs and 300 Family Farmers to supply products, inputs, and services all across Paraguay.

ISSUE: Public children’s hospitals often provide medical treatment but lack humane, supportive environments, leaving women and children emotionally stressed, fearful, and without dignity during care.

IDEA: The initiative used a government-led, CSR-supported, human-centered approach to redesign hospital spaces by listening to mothers, children, and healthcare staff and placing dignity and emotional safety at the core.

IMPACT: The hospital became calmer and more humane, with reduced distress among children, greater emotional support for mothers, improved care flow for staff, and increased public trust in government healthcare.

ISSUE: Whilst policymaking bears the weight of human consequence, the systems that surround it are often not equipped to engage feeling, participation and lived experience – yet artistic practice is often kept at the edges of the public policy space.

IDEA: MANIFEST embeds artists within government, using creative practice and structure to open spaces for reflection, experimentation and new forms of attention inside the everyday work of policymaking.

IMPACT: Artists working inside local and national government have created artworks, encounters and shifts in practice that have helped policymakers reflect differently on participation, evidence and the human consequences of decisions.

ISSUE: Hohe Einstiegshürden und Kulturunterschiede verhindern bisher, dass die öffentliche Verwaltung die Innovationskraft von Startups für mehr Geschwindigkeit und Effizienz nutzt.

IDEA: NewGov NRW schafft den vertraglichen und kulturellen Rahmen für eine agile Entwicklung nutzerzentrierter Verwaltungslösungen gemeinsam mit Startups.

IMPACT: Vier abgeschlossene, vier laufende und zahlreiche Innovationsprojekte in der Pipeline sorgen     u.a. in den Bereichen Regierungsprozesse und Genehmigungsverfahren für effiziente Verwaltungsprozesse, die Spaß machen.

ISSUE: 1500 Leistungen die von der Stadt angeboten werden sind ganz schön viele.

IDEA: Mobile First, easy to use und schnell führt das Lebenslagen Matching die Bürger*innen zu passenden Leistungen der Stadt.

IMPACT: Hohe Nutzung von Anfang an, Ausweitung auf mehr Lebenslagen, Grundstein für noch mehr Bürgerzentrierung!

ISSUE: Gewerbeflächen werden oft abgelehnt, weil Wirtschaft und Stadtgesellschaft getrennt wahrgenommen werden, obwohl Standorte nicht selbstverständlich sind.

IDEA: Mit dem Zukunftspark Ludwigsfelde wird ein Technologiepark gemeinsam mit Wirtschaft, Verwaltung und Bürger:innen entwickelt.

Impact: Akzeptanz wächst, Unternehmen bleiben engagiert, neue Ideen fließen direkt in die Stadtentwicklung ein.

ISSUE: Fachkräftemangel, Transformationsdruck und der Bedarf an vielfältigen Perspektiven stellen die Verwaltung vor große Herausforderungen.

IDEA: Ein behördenübergreifendes Traineeprogramm mit Rotation, modernen Methoden und starkem Netzwerk fördert Innovation und Kulturwandel

IMPACT: Das Programm bindet Talente langfristig, bringt frische Impulse in die Verwaltung und stärkt Hamburg als attraktiven, modernen Arbeitgeber

ISSUE: How can the momentum and experimental energy of World Design Capital 2026 be sustained and embedded in public institutions beyond the project year?

IDEA: The Design Action Plan translates experimental design projects into a design policy framework that integrates design into public space, public services, and policy-making.

IMPACT: Design becomes an institutional public capability, enabling more participatory, effective, and sustainable public decision-making in the long term.

ISSUE: Konkrete Hebel um wirkungorientiert zu arbeiten

IDEA: Empfehlungen, um mit Wirkungsorientierung zu starten

IMPACT: Wirkungsorientierung auf Agenda der Bundesregierung - Netzwerke, Arbeitshilfen, Templates