June 2020

Beyond the State of Emergency

In collaboration with the Understanding Value Co-Creation in Public Services for Transforming European Public Administrations (Co-VAL) consortium, the Lisbon Council convened the High-Level Webinar on Beyond the State of Emergency: How Cities are Working with Citizens to Exit the Lockdown. Roberta Cocco, deputy mayor of the city of Milan, delivered a keynote on Milan’s plans for opening up, as well as the transition of digital services from “nice-to-have” luxury to “crucial-to-survive” necessity. Martin Männil, chief information officer of the city of Tallinn, weigh in with an overview of how the Estonian capital plans to re-open – and the increasingly important role of digital services in public services in getting government services to people. Ines Mergel, professor of public administration at the department of politics and public administration at the University of Konstanz in Germany; Emilija Stojmenova Duh, head of the Public, Private, People Partnership (4P) Digital Innovation Hub and founder of the FabLab Network Slovenia; and Costas Kapsouropoulos, policy officer for eGovernment at the European Commission’s directorate-general for communications networks, content and technology (DG-Connect), joined a panel discussion on the challenge of lifting lockdown – and the way citizens and government are using new tools and technologies to collaborate in “co-designing” government services in new ways.