The Summit formed part of The 2023 Digital Government Summit where, Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister for innovations, development of education, science and technologies and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, delivered a ground-breaking presentation of Diia, the country’s public-service portal that offers a crucial life-line and a transparent, fully digital and corruption-free public service to Ukrainian citizens. Johannes Hahn, European commissioner for budget and administration, lunched the GovTech4All initiative, a 14-country programme to build new models for cross-border digital government service delivery.
Sofie Bracke, deputy mayor for digitalisation, economy, trade, port and sport in Ghent; Núria Espuny i Salvadó, director-general for digital administration in the Government of Catalonia; Layla Pavone, head, board of innovation, Milan; and Luc Soete, dean and professor at the Brussels School of Governance, led a fascinating session on the role of the local sector in driving Europe’s digital public-service transformation.
David Osimo, director of research at the Lisbon Council, presented The Interoperability Imperative: A Tale of Four Cities, a policy brief that looks at the coming breakthrough in digital public service and the upcoming Interoperable Europe Act under the prism of cities.
Later, the consortium convened The 2023 UserCentriCities Award Ceremony and handed out to the city of Ghent with The 2023 UserCentriCities Award for the best user-centric service in Europe.
Oleg Polovynko, chief information officer of Kyiv, delivered the closing keynote and accepted The 2023 European Digital Resilience Award for Kyiv Digital, the city’s life-saving application that offers among others, raid notifications, information on bomb shelters and heating stations.