Senior civil servants, post-graduate students and public-sector experts convened in Brussels for the latest meeting of the European Centre for Government Transformation. The discussions were fed by three outstanding case studies from College of Europe student teams, each assigned an agency to study and advice on a key modernisations strategy. This year, the aspiring European leaders worked on the public-services transition to artificial intelligence in Finland, designing a more digital, user-friendly parental benefit scheme in Norway and a tailoring employment activation support in Ireland. Gertrud Ingestad, director-general of informatics at the European Commission, led an all-star jury of top civil servants, who will jointly award The 2019 Public Sector Innovation Award to the winning team. Later in the day, members of the Government Innovation Executive Circle joined a fascinating and forward-looking discussion led by Ms Ingestad on the next plans and priorities for administrative interoperability in the upcoming European Commission and the “co-everything” approach that is being implemented to reach this objective. Gabriel Bellenger, global managing director, revenue industry consulting; Andreas Berggreen, director-general for IT and development at the Ministry of Taxation (Denmark); Michele Chang, professor of European political and governance studies at the College of Europe; Niall Egan, assistant secretary and head of the development and communications at the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (Ireland); Milagros Paniagua, chief of the public policies evaluation at the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (Spain); Frank Robben, general manager of the Crossroads Bank for Social Security (Belgium); and Pekka Sivonen, executive director of Business Finland, joined the fascinating conversation. The meeting convened under the umbrella of the European Centre for Government Transformation, a 10-year, tri-partite collaboration between the Lisbon Council, the College of Europe and Accenture.