The Commission's Tech4Good initiative and local/community-based online platforms can support digital and green transition. The Tech4Good initiative promotes technology-powered solutions and business models designed to advance economic, social and environmental causes. These solutions, often developed or deployed by local entrepreneurs, are being successfully used across the EU and, together with local/community-based online platforms, can offer a method to support adoption of digital solutions.
- When
- Tue 12, October 2021
11:30 - 13:00 CET - Moderators
- iordana Eleftheriadou, Team Leader - Advanced Technologies, European Commission.
Leena Whittaker, Legal Assistant, European Commission. - Speakers
- Manel Guerra, Representative, Open Data Terrassa – Terrassa.
Konstantinos Soulis, Representative of the Municipality of Ioannina, Consultation Platform – Ioannina. - Code
- 12PL21571
- Format
- Participatory Lab - world café, ideas labs
- Theme
- Digital Transition
- Partner
- European Commission - DG GROW
- Language
- English (EN)
- Replay – English
- https://vimeo.com/636767873
Session summary
The Tech4good marketplace is part of the European Commission’s 100 Intelligent Cities Challenge. It enables cities and communities to explore technology-powered solutions and business models, which could help them design their own responses to economic, social and environmental causes.
The session showcased two examples from the Tech4Good Marketplace and enabled a discussion on how such initiatives can transforms communities and encourage innovation by SMEs at local level.
- Open Data Terrassa makes data available via an online platform for uses that can economically benefit the city and generate social benefits.
- The Ioannina Consultation Platform encourages citizen’s participation in decisions taken by the City Hall and contributes to public discussion on local issues.
While the service they offer to communities is different, they share certain challenges.
- Citizens need to be encouraged to engage: even though these are digital tools, they should be coupled with opportunities for physical interactions (e.g. through a physical hub, using incubators) and cater to those that may have a lack of trust or be less digitally skilled. Complementing them with targeted communication efforts can increase their use (e.g. drawing particular data sets to the attention of those most likely to be interested – journalists, the start-up community).
- Lack of interoperability/lack of coordination: While interoperability can offer the means to engage with other public authorities locally, regionally and nationally - and even across borders - it is under-used. For smaller town and cities, without national or centralised initiatives (e.g. a concrete policy and legal framework) initiatives develop in isolation and without valuable partnerships, for example with bigger towns or areas.
The Tech4Good marketplace could help address some of these challenges. Ideas include sharing best practices on encouraging engagement/dialogue, adding information on where money can be found and how to navigate the public procurement rules and how legal rules could be developed to create the standards or templates needed to enable interoperability. With ideas increasingly driven by finding more green and digital solutions, the future looks bright for the development of innovative solutions by both public and private actors based on Tech4Good solutions.
Take away message
Interoperability and interaction (face-to-face & online) can increase the effectiveness of technology-powered solutions that respond to economic, social and environmental causes and encourage innovation in communities.
Ideas should not develop in isolation. With the right concrete policy and legal framework, interoperability can encourage interaction between those developing similar ideas in the next town or nationally, to reap benefits. Actively engaging those actors in the community who can use solutions to develop new business models or advance ideas, is key.
