(New York City – March 24, 2026) – The Intelligent Community Forum announced today the Full Certification of Assaí, a community of 15,000 people located in Paraná, Brazil.
Meeting ICF’s Certification standard provides objective validation that a community has high-quality connectivity, effective workforce development, a business innovation ecosystem and meaningful community engagement, digital inclusion and sustainability programs in place. These qualities combine to support the growth of innovative businesses, meet their talent needs and provide inclusive prosperity and a high quality of life.
Assaí is the first community in Brazil to be Certified as an Intelligent Community, and the smallest community in population terms to achieve this distinction. Since introducing the program, ICF has issued Intelligent Community Certifications to municipalities and counties in the US, Canada, Taiwan and Vietnam.
“I always dreamed of seeing our city at this level of global recognition. We are an orderly and hardworking city, deserving of this international visibility. May the world get to know Assaí, supporting our concept of sustainable development through talent management. By 2032, we will be the best small city to live in Brazil, betting on efficient management and forming a smart community,” said an emotional Mayor Michel Bomtempo.
“The Certification program evaluates cities and regions on 50 metrics spanning six categories,” said ICF co-founder Robert Bell, “including connectivity and digital services, workforce development, business and government innovation, community engagement, inclusion and sustainable growth. From our work with more than 200 communities around the world, we discovered that these are the categories that enable cities and regions of all sizes to thrive in an age of technology acceleration – not just today, but by adapting continually to an unknowable future.”
About Assaí
Assaí, in the state of Paraná, Brazil, has twice been recognized as a Top7 Intelligent Community, receiving this recognition from ICF in 2024 and 2025. Founded in 1920 by Japanese immigrants, Assaí originally prospered as the "capital of white gold," in reference to cotton production. But, with the mechanization of agricultural production, a major challenge for Assaí was retaining talent, seeking to implement new economic clusters and generate new opportunities for the population.
In 2022, Assaí began strategic planning, with the bold mission of becoming the best small city in Brazil by 2032 (the centennial year). To achieve this mission, Mayor Michel Bomtempo's administration developed a new concept of public management for small cities. This included looking at education in a broader way, from early childhood to the first job; using the innovation toolbox to train, attract and retain talent; and adapting the city as a living laboratory to disseminate new knowledge.
It was at this time that Assaí delved into the intelligent community methodology, consequently appropriating the teachings of the book "Brain Gain" from the Intelligent Community Forum, which serves as a reference guide for implementing the Innovation and Digital Transformation Ecosystem of Vale do Sol.
In the first ICF assessments, Assaí was able to qualify its strategic scenarios, taking advantage of international experiences to calibrate its workforce and adjust action plans according to the results of the metrics distributed across the six categories of the ICF Community Accelerator Strategy.
From 2022 to 2026, Assaí collected 34 awards, demonstrating how much the ICF Community Accelerator Strategy transformed the city. The concept of an intelligent community focuses its efforts on people. Assaí has adopted the six categories of the Accelerator Strategy, using them in four strategic axes: data governance; talent management; digital transformation; and care management.
With ICF, Assaí emerged from invisibility and gained institutional reputation. The city attracted a campus of the State University of Londrina, which will lead to more talent-training opportunities. The city also has been implementing the First Programmer Factory and Technical Training in Artificial Intelligence in Paraná; and they are formulating two new public policies for Brazil: the Center of Reference in Intelligence (human and artificial) and Entrepreneurship (CRIE), transforming local talents into agents of city development. Assaí is also developing the Smart Public Procurement Model, strengthening small-city businesses through a new digital culture and behavioral science.
With ICF Certification, Assaí aims to further scale opportunities, becoming a seed of anticipatory management for Latin America, using the lessons from Brain Gain to orchestrate the city's future scenarios.
Learn more about Assaí by visiting the community profile on the ICF website: https://www.intelligentcommunity.org/assai_parana
About Intelligent Community Certification
Intelligent Community Certification is an economic development credential based on ICF’s Community Accelerator Strategy and analytic methods developed over two decades of research and work with more than 200 communities around the world. It is provided in two stages. In the first stage, the municipality, county or region completes an online questionnaire with guidance from ICF. It reports on connectivity, workforce development, public and private-sector innovation, digital inclusion, public engagement and sustainability and resilience. ICF applies its proven analytic methods to the data provided in the completed questionnaire and produces both detailed and summary scoring. Communities whose summary score meets or exceeds the standard receive Provisional Certification based on this self-reported data, and the certification must be renewed yearly to remain in effect.
Full Certification requires an onsite audit by ICF. In a site visit, an ICF auditor validates the information provided by the community for its Provisional Certification and learns more about the programs and practices that make it an Intelligent Community. Following the audit, the auditor prepares a report detailing results and updates the scoring of the community based on the audit. Communities whose summary score meets or exceeds the standard receive Full Certification, which is good for three years.
Intelligent Community Certification is based on a set of standards described in detail on the ICF website.
About the Intelligent Community Forum
Starting in 2000 with a research project comparing cities in various nations, the Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org) created a unique, data-driven approach to development that puts citizens first while tapping the enormous economic and social potential of technology. In a world dominated by digital, ICF’s mission is to help cities, counties and regions create inclusive prosperous and sustainable communities powered by digital innovation. We do it for communities large and small, in urban clusters and outlying suburbs and rural places through training, consulting, assessment, certification and award programs. ICF believes that digital connectivity and technology create the opportunity for almost every community to develop a dynamic local economy and the social and cultural strengths that go with it – giving them all a chance to be great places to live, work, learn, grow, raise a family and prepare a path for the next generation.
The Forum sponsors Institutes around the world 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 details on the Intelligent Community Forum’s recent publications and programs, www.intelligentcommunity.org.
Intelligent Community Forum Contacts
Matthew Owen, Executive Director, Intelligent Community Forum
[email protected]
Auri Yates, Communications Manager, Intelligent Community Forum
[email protected]
