ENG
Twenty-One Partner, Fourteen- Country Govtech Coalition Launches at Digital Government Summit
Govtech4all to Begin with Pilot Projects on Secure Data, Easier Access to Benefits and Startups
On 25 May 21 leading government service-delivery agencies from 14 European countries launched #Govtech4all following a call from the European Commission for a European Union GovTech Incubator under the DIGITAL funding programme. The initiative is a fouryear collaboration to innovate the way governments deliver citizen services digitally.
The framework agreement was formally signed on stage at The 2023 Digital Government Summit in Brussels in the presence of Johannes Hahn, European commissioner for budget and administration, and Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister for innovation, development of education science and technology and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine. The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine is one of 21 key partners in the consortium.
“The Incubator for Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Delivery for all Govtech Initiatives in the European Union,” – known colloquially as Govtech4all – has as its core an ambitious programme to develop greater avenues for collaboration and learning across European countries and among agencies.
Johannes Hahn, European commissioner for budget and administration, emphasised that the experience of the COVID crisis has played a fundamental role in the launch of the new project: “The COVID crisis changed everything. It showed us that easy access to online services was not a “goodto-have” thing. Instead, it is an actual life or death necessity for many people. Govtech4all will build on the many pockets of effective service delivery developed in that time, adding an important layer of cross-border collaboration and joint, trans-European solution developments driven by the European Union member states themselves.”
David Osimo, director of research at the Lisbon Council and Govtech4all programme lead, adds that the project has at its heart a novel concept: “We don’t just want to roll out more and better services to citizens in need – though that goal remains a common one among progressive member states everywhere. We want to develop new, effective eco-systems and alliances capable of working together across countries to reuse what works, to pilot novel solutions and show us what we are capable of doing in this field.”
Govtech4all will develop three cross-border pilots in the first two years (2023-2025) in a first phase. This first phase will amount to €6 million with 50% coming from the Interoperable Europe budget part of DIGITAL. The funding will be available for a combination of innovative instruments, such as start-up challenges, innovative public procurement and in-house development.
Project partners are a who’s who of leading experts and digital-government agencies across Europe.
Among others they include:
- The Lisbon Council (Belgium)
- Technical University of Denmark (Denmark)
- Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (Estonia)
- Direction interministérielle du numérique (DINUM) (France)
- Govtech Campus Deutschland (Germany)
- GovMind GmbH (Germany)
- Dataport (Germany)
- National Infrastructures for Research and Technology (GRNET) (Greece)
- Department for Digital Transformation in the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Italy)
- Digital Accelerator of Latvia (DAoL) (Latvia)
- Innovation Agency (Lithuania)
- ICTU Foundation (Digicampus) (The Netherlands)
- Beta-I (Portugal)
- Gobe (Spain)
- Lantik -Government of Biscay (Spain)
- Municipality of Madrid (Spain)
- Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation (Spain)
- Agency for Technological Modernisation of Galicia (AMTEGA) (Spain)
- Bron Innovation, Govtech Sweden (Sweden)
- Ministry of Digital Transformation (Ukraine)
- Ukrainian Startup Fund (Ukraine)
- The European Commission (ex. Officio)
Two additional partnerships are pending a grant-agreement request:
- SPF Strategie et Appui (BOSA) (Belgium)
- Administrative Modernisation Agency (AMA) (Portugal)
The project has already defined three pilot projects to be developed in the first two years (2023-2025):
- a. Secure information in cross-border data spaces. Partners are Lantik (Spain), GRNET (Greece), DINUM (France), ICTU Foundation (The Netherlands) and AMTEGA (Spain)
- b. Helping EU citizens obtain social benefits with personal regulation assistants. Partners are ICTU Foundation (The Netherlands), GRNET (Greece) and DINUM (France).
- c. Startup challenge. Partners are Gobe (Spain), Bron Innovation (Sweden), Innovation Agency Lithuania (Lithuania), GovMind (Germamy), Municipality of Madrid (Spain), Beta-I (Portugal) and GRNET (Greece).
The consortium remains open to other national agencies active in govtech.