The GovTech4All project is a European initiative designed to foster a cohesive GovTech ecosystem across multiple countries. Funded by the Digital Europe Programme, it unites 26 organizations (soon to be 29) from 18 countries (soon to be 20) to innovate and improve public sector technology. The Framework Partnership Agreement is for four years and divided in two Specific Grant Agreements.

The overarching goal of GovTech4All is to foster the development of a pan-European GovTech market and ecosystem, aimed at delivering excellent digital public services for European citizens and beyond.

The project focuses on three primary pilot projects for the first two years. The Secure Cross-Border Information Sharing initiative aims to enhance secure communication and data sharing across European borders using advanced encryption techniques. The Personal Regulation Assistant (PRA) is developing a digital tool to help EU citizens identify and apply for social benefits, promoting a proactive government approach. Lastly, the GovTech Startup Challenge tests open innovation and procurement methods to find and scale digital solutions for energy efficiency in European municipalities.

Besides the three primary pilots, the project engages in several additional activities to support its overarching goals:

Ecosystem Mapping & Definition:

The project involves mapping the GovTech ecosystem in partner countries to identify new departments and institutions that can participate. This includes identifying the challenges faced by governments, citizens, and the private sector in implementing GovTech solutions and exploring potential funding streams for new pilots.

Scale-Up Framework:

A crucial part of the project is to develop a methodological framework for validating and assessing the scalability and maturity of digital innovation pilots. This involves early dialogue with pilot teams to ensure solutions are scalable, organizing validations at different stages, and providing recommendations for Large-Scale Pilots.

Promotion & Stakeholder Engagement:

The project organizes pan-European and international activities to promote solutions developed in the pilots. These activities include participation in events, workshops, pitching sessions, and networking with GovTech experts, public sector stakeholders, and SMEs. The goal is to increase awareness and engagement among potential users and technology providers.

Outreach & Communication:

The project focuses on consolidating internal communication and dissemination within the consortium and across borders. It organizes knowledge-sharing meetings, writes reports on relevant GovTech topics, and raises awareness about the project's results at the EU level and beyond.

These additional efforts ensure that the GovTech4All project not only implements innovative pilots but also builds a robust ecosystem, supports scaling and sustainability, and promotes widespread adoption and impact of GovTech solutions across Europe.

The three primary pilots in GovTech4All

For the years 2023-2025, Govtech4all supports three collaborative pilots between government agencies to reuse solutions developed from other countries and to procure solutions from startups. A new round of pilots will be launched in 2025.

Secure information in cross-border data spaces

Partners: LANTIK (ES), GRNET (GR), DINUM (FR)

Description: The overarching objective of Pilot 1 (led by LANTIK) is to implement a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) for commonly agreed cross-border use cases, where security, privacy, and interoperability in the exchange/storage of sensitive information is a priority. Two use cases have been selected:

Health: Instant communications between health professionals with the possibility of sharing files (e.g. medical records);
Skills: Sharing information for students moving to other countries.

These use cases will address the following technological aspects:

Secure encryption algorithms (e.g. quantum-safe encryption algorithms - PQC)
Work with encrypted data (e.g. homomorphic algorithms - FHE);
Work within shared dataspaces.

Helping EU citizens obtain social benefits with personal regulation assistants

Partners: DIGICAMPUS ICTU (NL), GRNET (GR), DINUM (FR).

Description: Pilot 2 (led by DIGICAMPUS ICTU) relies on the implementation of a Personal Regulation Assistant (PRA), a rules as a code digital tool, that will be capable to assist citizens in identifying which benefits they qualify for and in applying for them, and will enable those with digital literacy but limited business knowledge to provide guidance to potential beneficiaries. The PRA developed in this pilot will represent a move towards a more proactive government. The objective of this pilot is to amalgamate and enhance the existing knowledge of Rules as Code solutions (like OpenFisca) within the context of PRA across three member states, thereby simplifying access to entitlements for citizens and other entities.

Startup challenge for innovative procurement

Partners: GOBE (ES), GovTech Sweden (SE), Innovation Agency Lithuania (LT), GovMind (DE), Ayuntamiento de Madrid (ES), Beta-I (PT), GRNET (GR).

Description: Pilot 3 (led by GOBE) aims to test open innovation processes and innovative procurement at a cross border European level in order to Identify, pilot and scale up digital solutions to help European municipalities to use energy more efficiently.

Pilot 3 is pioneering the GovTech open innovation process at a cross border European level.

The implementation of innovative procurement method of Design Contest will allow to evaluate and select the best solutions to the identified challenges and to run a pilot with the winning startup.

Find more information about GovTech4All Challenge Open Call here.

More about GovTech4All

Govtech4all brings together national govtech initiatives in a consortium of 21 digital agencies from 14 European countries.

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 Lisbon Council (Belgium), Coordinator

Govtech4all is a Framework Partnership Agreement supported by the Digital Europe Programme. It is permanently open for national digital agencies to join.

National agencies interested to join should contact the Lisbon Council, coordinator of the initiative, at the email govtech4all@lisboncouncil.net.

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Non-scientific publications: Assessment of Rules as Code methods concerning the goal of assisting citizens personally with regulations

Flyer: GovTech4Alls flyer

Deliverables

Deliverables 3.1: Validation and Maturity Assessment Scaling Framework

Deliverables 3.2: Scalability Validation and Maturity Assessment Reports & Recommendations on Large-Scale Pilots (LSPs)