REA
Winner of the best pitching award Anna Triantafillou from YourDataStories surrounded by project colleagues and the jury
The event, organised jointly by the Research Executive Agency (REA) and DG CNECT, was introduced by a welcome speech of REA's Head of Department Industrial Leadership and Societal Challenges Marc Bellens. In his address, Mr. Bellens highlighted that a digitised public sector is necessary to establish a transparent, open and participatory governance that is better equipped to serve the societal needs of the 21st century. "We are seeing Horizon2020 projects as important instruments to support these policy goals," he stressed.
Mr. Bellens' speech was followed by a pitching competition between the five coordinators of the 2014 ICT-enabled Open Government call who had benefited from a dedicated training from the Common Exploitation Booster the previous day. Daniel Tanis from Digiwhist, Anna Alberts from Openbudgets.eu, Vittorio Scarano from Route-to-PA, Pauli Misikangas from WeLive and Anna Trintafillou from YourDataStories presented their projects to the audience, describing their strategies for approaching the market and how they intend to exploit the results.
The winning project YourDataStories has developed an online tool whereby governments are encouraged to share meaningful data and citizens and journalists can engage, mix and compare this data in an interactive manner. "We all agreed on the winner, because it was the most complete presentation that covered all aspects," announced Leonard Soenen from the venture capital fund Volta Ventures before awarding the prize to Anna Triantafillou.
The next part of the day was dedicated to roundtable sessions, where participants discussed, among other topics, innovation in public procurement, sustainability and business models and the incentives for public administrations to engage in innovative e-government initiatives.
The day ended with several presentations on ongoing European Commission policies and initiatives relevant for the field of e-government. Andrea Halmos from DG CNECT presented the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment signed this month, in which ministers of EU and EFTA countries declared their commitment for digital transformation of public administrations. Her presentation was followed by a short overview of the Commission's initiatives supporting innovation, exploitation and sustainability. In particular this included the Innovation Radar initiative, which focuses on identification of high potential Horizon 2020 projects. Ramona Ocak from DG ECFIN presented the European Investment Project Portal, an online match-making portal connecting EU project promoters with investors. Finally, the Common Dissemination Booster was presented as a service to support an efficient dissemination strategy for project clusters. Attention was also brought to the recently published brochure on 'eGovernment in local and regional administrations: guidance, tools and funding for implementation'. This guide will help local and regional administrations implement and find EU funding for eGovernment in line with the principles and priorities set out in the EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020.
The event contributed to the sustainability of the projects and provided ideas for future policy for REA and DG CNECT.