Annual Awards Program to culminate in October 2023 with the announcement of the 2023 Intelligent Community of the Year

(November 22, 2022 – New York City) – After announcing New Taipei City, Taiwan as the 2022 Intelligent Community of the Year, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) has opened nominations for the next cycle of its prestigious international Awards Program for cities and regions. The 2023 Awards Program culminates with the announcement of the 25th Intelligent Community of the Year at the ICF Global Summit in October 2023 in New York City.

More information and the questionnaire can be found at https://www.intelligentcommunity.org/questionnaire. There is no cost to submit a questionnaire. The deadline to nominate a community for consideration in the 2023 Awards cycle is January 31, 2023.

This year, the process for a nominating a community has changed with the introduction of a new community questionnaire. This streamlined questionnaire replaces open-ended questions with a series of yes-no and multiple-choice questions. This change allows communities to complete the questionnaire with a smaller time commitment and lessens language barriers for non-English speaking communities – while still collecting the information ICF needs to develop an in-depth analysis and scoring of each participating community.

“Our new questionnaire has been in development for the past six months,” said ICF co-founder Robert Bell. “We believe the new format will be more inclusive, take less time to complete and better target the Factors that make a community intelligent. My thanks to the group of ICF members and colleagues who advised us on topics, questions and phrasing. All were experienced with our program and represented a broad swathe of small, midsize and large cities and counties. We could not have done it without them.”

The Smart21 Communities of 2023 will be announced on February 23 as part of a virtual conference, Turning Connectivity into Economic Development. Registration will open for this conference on December 1.

Why Communities Should Apply:
Communities that participate in the ICF Awards Program receive many benefits:

Award winners – or communities that appear in the Smart21 list or higher – give a prominent position to their status in economic development, because winners are chosen from analysis of up to 400 communities around the world. Status as an award-winning Intelligent Community is typically granted to less than 40 communities in any three-year period.

Unlike any similar award program, ICF deliberately includes small, midsize and large cities as well as counties and regions in its analysis, because we evaluate policies, programs and their results in a broad range of Factors, not just tech spending. Award-winning communities range from populations of 20,000 to more than 6 million.

Communities use our questionnaire as a guide for development issues – from knowledge work and innovation to community engagement – that are vital to their future. Completing a questionnaire reveals much about a community that you may not have known and changes how leaders think about the essential Factors that together create balanced, inclusive and lasting growth.

About Intelligent Community Forum (ICF)
The Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org), headquartered in New York, is a global network of over 180 cities, metro regions and counties with a think tank at its heart and a mission to make everyone’s “hometown” at great place. ICF studies and promotes the best practices of the world's Intelligent Communities as they adapt to the new demands and seize the opportunities presented by broadband and digital technology. To help cities and regions build prosperous economies, solve social problems and enrich local cultures, the Intelligent Community Forum conducts research, hosts events around the globe, publishes books, and produces its high-profile annual international awards program. The Forum sponsors research Institutes in North America dedicated to the study of the movement, and national organizations in Canada and Taiwan, both home to many Intelligent Communities. In 2012 ICF was invited to participate at the Nobel Peace Prize conference in Oslo and in 2014, its model and work was recognized by the U.S. Department of Commerce under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which, according to the American government, was "aimed at creating a more flexible and responsive system of workforce development to meet the needs of employers looking to fill 21st century jobs.” For more information, go to www.intelligentcommunity.org/icf_membership. For more details on the Intelligent Community Forum’s recent publications and programs, www.intelligentcommunity.org.

Intelligent Community Forum Contacts
Matthew Owen, Director of Operations, Intelligent Community Forum
Tel. +1 646-291-6166 (x105)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @Newcommunities

Victoria Krisman, Communications Manager, Intelligent Community Forum
Email: [email protected]