1. Home
  2. What We Do
  3. Awards

Intelligent Community Awards Program®

The Intelligent Community Awards Program® honors the achievements of Intelligent Communities in creating an innovative and growing economy, an inclusive society and an affirming culture that is open to the world. Honorees receive local and international media coverage for their work. Awards are presented in three stages:

Smart21 Communities – announced in FEBRUARY

ICF selects the first set of award-winning communities from assessment questionnaires submitted during the most recent three-year period. Prior to selection, ICF informs all eligible communities in our database that they are under consideration so they can either update their information or ask to be excluded from the current Awards cycle. From analysis of the remaining data, ICF announces our Smart21 Communities of the Year®, semi-finalists for Intelligent Community of the Year, in February.

Top7 Communities – announced in JUNE

We invite the Smart21 to answer narrative questions about their most important programs promoting connectivity, workforce development, innovation, engagement, digital inclusion and sustainability. An independent team of Analysts reviews answers to the narrative questions and scores them. These scores are combined with the Smart21 scoring to narrow the 21 to the Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year®, which are announced in June of each year. The Top7 receive local and international media coverage and become the finalists for ICF's Intelligent Community of the Year award.

Intelligent Community of the Year – announced in OCTOBER

ICF interviews each of the Top7 to gain additional insight into the programs they have described and produces reports on each, which are reviewed by an international team of jurors along with the Smart21 and Top7 data. Their votes are combined with the scoring from the Smart21 and Top7 stages to select the Intelligent Community of the Year®, which is named on the closing day of the Global Summit in October.

Nominations close in January of each year. You are welcome to submit a nomination at any time. Start your nomination →