Eligibility & judging criteria

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible, your entry to the Smart Data Challenge Prize must meet the following criteria:

You must be a UK registered incorporated entity. For groups of entities/consortiums, the lead entity must be based in the United Kingdom and be able to receive funds into a UK bank account in the name of the lead entity. Organisations other than the lead entity may be based outside of the UK.
Your entry must be a proposal to develop, or further develop, a Smart Data solution. By “Smart Data” we mean the secure sharing of customer data, upon the customer’s request, with Authorised Third-party Providers (ATPs).
Your entry will need to demonstrate how you intend to use at least one of the datasets provided in the data sandbox, that will be made available to Prize Finalists. In addition to data made available in the sandbox, your use case may also use other sources of publicly held or open data, or data you have the right to use, including from other sectors not listed above.
You can submit more than one entry to the Challenge Prize however each entry must relate to a different initiative or innovation. Furthermore, if you submit multiple entries, Challenge Works will only select one entry for the Challenge Prize.

Assessment process and judging criteria

After the open call closes at 23:59 on 14 March 2025, an independent expert panel will assess eligible submitted entries and select the most promising solutions based on the assessment criteria set out below. The expert panel will be supported by the Challenge partners (Department for Business and Trade, Challenge Works, the Open Data Institute (ODI), Smart Data Foundry and NayaOne).

The expert panel will aim to achieve a balanced cohort of up to 10 finalists with a view to demonstrating the breadth of opportunities Smart Data can unlock.

Judges will mark entries based on the following criteria:

1. Impact: (40%)
This criterion focuses on the entrants’ understanding of the end users needs, the problem to be solved and how the proposed use case could provide real-world benefits to the specified users and wider society.

An impactful Smart Data solution will:
- Articulate the problem it is solving and provide evidence on the scale of the opportunity
- Have clearly defined end users and the potential to provide real-world benefits for these users
- Have the potential to create additional benefits to the wider economy and/or society
2. Innovation: (25%)
This criterion focuses on the degree of improvement, originality and uniqueness offered by the proposed solution.

An innovative Smart Data solution will:
- Demonstrate innovative ways of solving problems by bringing together data from across sectors or different sub sectors in new ways, beyond banking data
- Solve the end user’s problem better than existing solutions
- Be able to generate insights that help to inform the development of Smart Data ecosystems
3. Feasibility: (25%)
This criterion assesses the entrants’ approach to delivering a working prototype by September 2025 and the long-term viability of the solution, pending the availability of data, including those provided through future Smart Data schemes.

At each stage of the prize, the team should be able to demonstrate: :
- A robust and realistic plan to deliver & implement the use case
- An understanding of the data requirements for prototyping and the environment necessary to facilitate and implement the solution beyond the challenge
4. Delivery Team: (10%)
This criterion evaluates the entrants’ understanding of the human resources, skills and partnerships required to deliver the prototype and how well they fulfill these requirements.

A deliverable Smart Data Solution will be underpinned by a:
- Clear understanding of the skills required to deliver and scale the solution
- Demonstrable route to attaining the required resources and skills
- Clear articulation of roles and responsibilities within the internal organisation team and the wider delivery team (if applicable)

Other considerations

The end of the Smart Data Challenge Prize is September 2025. Entrants should consider that they will be expected to have at minimum a working prototype (approximately TRL 6) that can be demonstrated by this point. A full definition of TRL levels can be found here.

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Eligibility & judging criteria

Eligibility criteria

Assessment process and judging criteria

1. Impact: (40%)

2. Innovation: (25%)

3. Feasibility: (25%)

4. Delivery Team: (10%)

Other considerations

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