HECAT is part of a community of EU actions (https://cordis.europa.eu/) which are exploring disruptive technologies in public services. Here we list some of the projects we track closely and work in partnership with to share experiences and impact.
Impulse project
IMPULSE “Identity Management in PUbLic Services” will conduct a user-centric and multidisciplinary impact analysis on the integration Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on eID in public services, evaluating benefits but also risks, costs and limitations, considering socio-economic, legal, ethical and operational impacts, together with framework conditions (like GDPR and eIDAS regulations, existing eID systems, and standards).
IMPULSE will use a demand-driven co-creation process as the guide, including pilot-oriented operational experimentation and involving Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs). A set of 6 representative and innovative case studies in Denmark, Spain, Bulgaria, Iceland and Italy, led by a public service partner, will provide a variety of cultural, operational, legal, procedural and social contexts for research.
Two major outcomes will be produced:
- Holistic AI and blockchain technology supporting GDPR-compliant eID to complement existing EU identity schemas, ensuring cross-border access and secure and adaptable requirements for actionable integration/adoption.
- Actionable roadmaps (detailing pathways and good practices) for the adoption, escalation and sustainability of such advanced eID technologies by public services in the EU ecosystem.
Contact
European Project Manager
Alicia Jiménez González
CO3 project
CO3 “Digital Disruptive Technologies to Co-create, Co-produce and Co-manage Open Public Services along with Citizens” aims to assess the benefits and risks of 5 disruptive technologies (blockchain, augmented reality, geolocated social network, interactive democracy tools, gamification) in the co-creation, co-production and co-management of public services with citizens as Public Administration (PA) partners. CO3 pilots the technologies’ ecosystem and the “Augmented Commoning Area” model in Paris, Turin and Athens. It evaluates the outcomes of the new interaction model between PA and citizens under a set of metrics in three dimensions: social and cultural, economic and legal, in order to provide guidance for the introduction of these disruptive technologies in the processes of public services delivery.
Contact
Scientific Coordinator: Prof Guido Boella
Project Manager: Dr Cristina Viano
ETAPAS project
ETAPAS “Ethical Technology Adoption in Public Administration Services” seeks to improve public service delivery for citizens by facilitating the ethical adoption of Disruptive Technologies (DTs) in compliance with European and national strategies and guidelines.
The 14 partners, lead by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, are achieving three fundamental objectives working in this direction:
- Define a conceptual Responsible Disruptive Technologies framework to assess and manage the ethical risks of DT-based applications in the public sector and their potential social and legal impacts.
- Design and develop a software prototype that enables ethical assessment of DTs in the public sector on the basis of the conceptual framework.
- Validate the relevance and applicability of the whole framework, the indicators and relevant metrics to public administration processes via application to four real-life Use Cases.
Contact
Project Coordination:
NLAB4CIT project
NLAB4CIT “Network of laboratories for civic technology co-production” is a European network, coordinated by the University of Turin (UNITO), consisting of three local authorities, three knowledge institutions and the Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities (VVSG).
This project has the ambition to make public services more accessible making the citizens more active in their design, co-creation and management, demonstrating the applicability of some existing digital solutions in different and new sectors of public services co-production, widening the understanding of their factor of success and sustainability. Public administration, citizens and business will collaborate, thanks to digitally enabled innovative solutions (Blockchain, AI, IoT, Augmented Reality, Geolocation in Social Networking, Opinion Formation) that will be provided by a European Network of Civic Technologies Laboratories.
Contact
Project Manager: Ms Alice Zanasi
QualiChain project
QualiChain “Decentralised Qualifications’ Verification and Management for Learner Empowerment, Education Reengineering and Public Sector Transformation” targets the creation, piloting and evaluation of a decentralised platform for storing, sharing and verifying education and employment qualifications and focuses on the assessment of the potential of blockchain technology, algorithmic techniques and computational intelligence for disrupting the domain of public education, as well as its interfaces with private education, the labour market, public sector administrative procedures and the wider socio-economic developments.The project focuses more specifically on the assessment of the implications (technical, political, socio-economic, legal and cultural) as well as the impact – in terms of benefits and risks – of the prescribed solution’s utilisation, whose disruptive potential lies both in the exploitation of the innovative features of the aforementioned individual technologies, as well as in their unique combination in a new territory for the provision of a set of baseline services (Awards’/ Qualifications’ Archiving; Awards’/ Qualifications’ Verification; Qualifications’ Portfolio Management) and a number of value-adding services (Career Counselling and Intelligent Profiling and Competency Management including Recruitment; Competencies’ Evaluation and Development; Consulting and Decision Support).
Contact
Project Manager: Dr Panagiotis Kokkinakos
Dissemination Leader: Dr Alexander Mikroyannidis
Token project
Launched in January 2020, TOKEN “Transformative impact of distributed technologies in public services” is an EU-funded project whose ultimate goal is to develop an experimental ecosystem to enable the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies and to prove its value, via highly replicable Use Cases, as driver for the transformation of public services.
Decentralised Ledger Technologies have the potential to allow public service to: improve effectiveness; reduce friction between agencies; reduce bureaucratic barriers; boost public engagement; enhance digital democracy and transparency; improve knowledge sharing; and foster automation. TOKEN aims to provide a range of decentralised agnostic technological components enabling public agencies to pilot the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies towards more open, transparent, trusted and efficient public services.
Contact
Project Coordinator: Ms Lynda OMahony
The HECAT Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research & innovation programme under grant agreement No 870702