Search Results

The convergence of Cloud, Big Data and AI has already resulted in major transformation across Government services, yet the process of policy making itself is often left behind. Five EU-funded projects: Policy Cloud, Decido, AI4PublicPolicy, DUET and Intelcomp joint forces in creating the virtual Evidence Based Policy Making in Europe event to explore major challenges, trends and opportunities to improve public sector decision making that will deliver healthier, happier places to live and work. Digital technologies have changed the world. Today people expect faster, seamless, on-demand services from their providers, and the Government is no exception. For effective urban operations which make life easier for residents, workers and visitors, Public Sector decision making needs to become more agile, breaking down data silos to combine day-to-day tactical decisions with longer term policies and strategies. Disruptive technologies such as Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High Performance Computing (HPC) unlock new opportunities for sustainable decision making through visualisations, simulations and predictions that enhance transparency, increase public support and involvement, and optimise resources. To support this transformation, the aforementioned pan-European projects dedicated to using cloud for data-driven policy in the premier conference for government that focused purely on data and tools for decision making. Together with leading change agents from the European Commission and Local Government the event explored the new decision-making ecosystems being built by cities and administrations, including the use cases being adopted, and the innovative data and tools being adopted for modern policy making. The event took place virtually, it engaged 112 participants on 9 December 2021 and 64 participants on day 10 December 2021. The main points addressed over the 2 days were: Use Cases: The speakers brought real-life examples of how they are transforming the traditionally slow deliberative policy making process in the fields of health, climate change and mobility, to one that is more agile and responsive. We heard directly from cities themselves on how they are developing better evidence-based policies which adapt as new data comes to light, and which are trusted and contributed to by relevant stakeholders who feel engaged in the process. Tools: We saw how city managers and policy makers are co-creating data-driven decision-making ecosystems with cutting edge tools which enable them to visualise, analyse and even predict the complex impact of decisions across multiple domains, time and space. The event was hands-on with AI, big data and digital twin demos and was inspired by what stakeholders could potentially achieve for their administration. Strategies: Learned how to manage legal, ethical and standards challenges and constraints in our increasingly digital world. From best practices to principles and legislation our speakers helped the audience understand and navigate the complex environment in pragmatic ways that helped them start their own journey. The event resulted in 3 policy briefs, you can read them all here: Data Driven Policy Cluster publishes joint policy brief Governance Ethics for Evidence Based Policymaking Data Driven Policy Cluster publishes joint policy brief Policy Prediction, the Future of Evidence-Based Policymaking Data Driven Policy Cluster publishes joint policy brief Co-Creation and Stakeholder Engagement for Evidence Based Policymaking

PRESS RELEASE: 12 May 2022 - The convergence of Cloud, Big Data and AI has caused considerable transformations across governments, with citizens demanding quick, seamless and personalised services in the public sector. Decision makers need to embrace new innovative technologies to make more sustainable policies based on real-time information, predicted impact and citizen input. These new technologies and data open up exciting possibilities for collaboration, co-creation and consultation with citizens. In this direction, the Data Driven Policy Cluster released a Joint Policy Brief regarding “Co-Creation and Stakeholder Engagement for Evidence Based Policymaking”, written by Fabio Perossini (DECIDO), Pavel Kogut (DUET), Jerónimo Arenas (IntelComp) and Alessandro Amicone (AI4PublicPolicy). The Joint Policy Brief derived from the “Stakeholder Engagement Track” of the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit 2021, which explored how new technologies and tools can be used for engagement and innovative collaboration between policy makers and citizens. To address the challenge and allow for real and effective evidence-based policy making, the Data Driven Policy Cluster projects adopt the following approaches: DECIDO: DECIDO project prioritises data usability against their simple availability, proposing a co-creation pathway based on experts listening instead of teaching, supporting fluidity in processes and adaptation to citizens’ needs. In DECIDO, three pillars for innovative citizen engagement are experimented in the Turin pilot, introducing them to a Simplified Policy lifecycle management methodology with the support of EOSC services for privacy issues, content management and other cloud services. AI4PublicPolicy: AI4PublicPolicy project is a joint effort of policymakers and Cloud/AI experts to unveil AI’s potential for automated, transparent and citizen-centric development of public policies, with citizens and businesses engagement being one of the main pillars. The project is implemented using a co-creation methodology and a participatory design approach that involves all relevant stakeholders, to ensure the citizen-centric nature of the open Virtualized Policy Management Environment (VPME) that provides fully-fledged policy development/management functionalities, based on AI technologies with emphasis on the realization of citizen-oriented feedback loops. In selected cases (e.g., in the scope of the project’s pilots in Athens, Genova, Nicosia, Lisbon and Burgas) the project also provides incentives for citizens’ participation in the process. DUET: DUET project allows for stakeholder engagement in the context of network oriented Local Digital Twins (LDTs), where citizens can review, tweak and propose alternatives to original plans. This strengthens the actual link between government and civil society, leading to better governance and democratic outcomes for everyone. DUET’s platform can be accessed by anyone to see the impact of road closures on traffic and pollution in nearby streets (Pilsen), to find green routes for recreation and walking (Athens), or to understand how pollution levels, both air and noise, change according to traffic volumes (Ghent). Policy Cloud: Policy Cloud project improves the modelling, creation and implementation of public and business policies, delivering an integrated environment of curated datasets, and data management, manipulation, and analysis tools. Policy Cloud runs four pilot use cases in four different EU countries, covering different fields and serving as demonstrators for data-driven policy management. The models and tools developed in these different contexts and sectors are applied in heterogeneous environments and settings, demonstrating their reusability via a co-creative process, based on the Design Thinking methodology. IntelComp: IntelComp project builds a cloud platform that offers text mining tools for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policies, ensuring that policies are created with people and not just for people. With that aim, IntelComp adopts a Living Labs methodology, embracing a two-fold co-creation approach with citizens (i) to co-design and co-create an IntelComp tool for citizens (the Citizen Viewer), jointly revising user requirements and improving the developed tool in an iterative manner to make the results easy to use and actionable to the users and (ii) to refine and validate this cutting-edge tool through the co-creation of policies with citizens via participatory processes in three different domains: Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change/Blue Economy and Health/Cancer. In the process of adopting new technologies and tools for innovative collaboration between policy makers and citizens, the biggest challenge seems to be cultural and not technical. To this end, the Data Driven Policy Cluster projects developed some recommendations to overcome this cultural challenge, that are summarised in the Joint Policy Brief as follows: Be open and try to adapt to what is needed from the citizen’s point of view. Listen to what citizens want and not force them to do something that they are not used to. Have “fluidity”, flexibility, and be open to a continuously changing approach, instead of adopting structured ways and approaches to issues. Develop trust, high engagement levels and find a way to keep this relationship open. Use role play training or serious gaming capacity building techniques, to test these options, understand how to talk with the stakeholders and how to reward them, in order to have the best engagement. The Joint Policy Brief about “Co-Creation and Stakeholder Engagement for Evidence Based Policymaking” is available on Zenodo.

PRESS RELEASE: 25 April 2022 - The Data Driven Policy Cluster, which includes DUET and four other projects, is pleased to announce the second of three joint policy briefs, titled Policy Prediction, the Future of Evidence-Based Policymaking?, an output from the inaugural event organised by the cluster in December 2021, the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit 2021. The policy brief is a result of the Future with Policy Impact Analysis & Prediction Track of the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit 2021, which tackled Evidence-based policymaking (EBP) and its rapid change mainly driven by factors such as evolving meaning of evidence, i.e. data- driven insights drawn from modelling and simulations coming from a multitude of data types and sources; new actors coming into play, including open to data scientists and data savvy public servants; more attention for agenda setting and policy design, and different relation between policy and evidence: from reactive and ex-post to proactive and ex-ante. Further, in the policy brief are discussed the critical roles of interoperability and data sharing for the advancement of policy prediction, practical policy prediction cases, and challenges encountered by stakeholders. Finally, a number of policy recommendations based on the experience gathered within the different projects are presented: Start small, experiment, then scale fast through co-creation Foster a culture of innovation building on successful experiments and pilots Leverage European data sharing infrastructures to increase data availability and accessibility across policy areas and government levels Create trusted data spaces to facilitate data sharing by citizens and businesses Secure the necessary multidisciplinary resources Ensure European building blocks for data-driven policy prediction Two other joint policy briefs will be published based on the other tracks covering Governance Ethics, and Co-Creation and Stakeholder Engagement. The policy brief has been published openly on Zenodo here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6457625 -END- About the Data Driven Policy Cluster Five H2020 e-governance projects have joined efforts in the Data Driven Policy Cluster to promote the use of European cloud infrastructures for public administrations and policy making. The Cluster is made up of AI4PublicPolicy, Decido, DUET, IntelComp and Policy Cloud.

The first in a series of three, this policy brief offers recommendations to public sector stakeholders on how to make policymaking not just evidence based but also ethical. PRESS RELEASE: 21 April 2022 - The Data Driven Policy Cluster, which includes DUET and four other projects, is pleased to announce the first of three joint policy briefs, Governance Ethics for Evidence Based Policymaking, an output from the inaugural event organised by the cluster in December 2021, the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit 2021. The policy brief is a result of the Governance Ethics Track of the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit 2021, where core ethical issues were identified and discussed in the context of European research projects aiming to develop policymakers’ ability to make key policy decisions, based on objective criteria, derived from real-world data. These issues included: ensuring the relevance of collected and processed data, the management of potential biases within datasets or processing algorithms, and the transparency, explainability and security of the data analysis and visualisation process. The session also included the presentation of strategies implemented in each of the relevant projects to ensure these (and other) issues are efficiently addressed, so as to simultaneously protect the trustworthiness and effectiveness of the solutions pursued by each project. In this resulting policy brief, the most significant ideas and conclusions reached during the Track are presented clearly and a number of policy recommendations based on the experience gathered within the different projects are presented. Two other joint policy briefs will be published based on the other tracks covering Policy Prediction, and Co-Creation and Stakeholder Engagement. The policy brief has been published openly on Zenodo here: https://zenodo.org/record/6366119#.YlhHv-hByUk -END- About the Data Driven Policy Cluster Five H2020 e-governance projects have joined efforts in the Data Driven Policy Cluster to promote the use of European cloud infrastructures for public administrations and policy making. The Cluster is made up of AI4PublicPolicy, Decido, DUET, IntelComp and Policy Cloud.

Digital Flanders is a finalist for the EU Presidency ‘Tech for Government’ challenge showcasing how DUET Digital Twins collaboratively solve real-world policy challenges. Fig: DUET Representatives Amongst the Finalists at the Tech for Government Pitch PRESS RELEASE: Thursday, March 17, 2022, Strasbourg, France — Digital Flanders joined delegations of Ministers in charge of public sector transformation this week as they travelled to the National Institute of Public Service in Strasbourg to adopt a new strategic framework for the European Public Administration Network (EUPAN). Shortlisted as a finalist in the "Tech for Government Pitch" competition, sponsored by the French National Institute of Public Service in celebration of Frances take-over of the EU Presidency, Digital Flanders was given the opportunity to attend the meeting and introduce Ministers to their award-winning EU funded DUET Digital Twin initiative via a short film and pitch. The conference was opened by Ms Maryvonne Le Brignone, Director of the National Institute for Public Service, along with European Commissioners Mr Johannes Hahn and Ms Elisa Ferreira, who stressed the importance of responsible technology adoption to address common challenges for 21st century public administrations. Mr Lieven Raes and Mr Raf Buyle from Digital Flanders responded to the challenge by showcasing how DUET virtual 3D city replicas leverage both historic and real-time data sources to help public administration to make better evidence-based operational decisions and longer-term policy choices. Using a real-life example of a potential bridge closure in Ghent, Ministers saw how various rerouting systems affected traffic volumes, noise and air quality in neighbouring streets. These contextual visuals, which anyone can easily understand, makes it easier for public administrations to collaborate on and communicate why specific decisions are made thereby strengthening democracy in the process. “We couldn’t be prouder of being a finalist pitching to 27 EU Ministers” said Lieven Raes coordinator of DUET. “Listening to their needs and their visions makes us even more convinced that digital twin technology can be a cornerstone for creating high-quality, inclusive urban policy and public services. We believe that people are born problem solvers and given the right tools and support, all can understand and contribute to big policy ideas. Digital Twins help anyone regardless of background understand urban data and can help create local policies that are collaborative and sustainable”. The DUET Digital Twin platform and video pitch can be accessed at www.digitalurbantwins.com

New Policy Brief guides public organizations in the responsible and trustworthy adoption of disruptive technologies. PRESS RELEASE: Brussels, 16 March 2022. – Today, the UnLock cluster formed by European funded innovation projects DUET, PoliVisu, URBANAGE and ETAPAS released its first joint Policy Brief entitled “UnLocking the potential of digital disruption for responsible, sustainable and trusted urban decisions”. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, unlocking new insights and intelligence to transform public services in ways that were previously impossible only a few years ago. Examples of digital disruption include the innovative use of Cloud for real-time, secure data sharing across departments, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for policy impact prediction, and the use of Digital Twins for large-scale urban design and decision management. Implemented correctly these digital innovations can ensure privacy, autonomy and build the trust needed for digitally informed decisions which unlock opportunities and results that benefit everyone. UnLock recognises the Public Sector has a unique responsibility to stay at the forefront of digital change to ensure disruptive new technologies for decision-making are not used in coercive or harmful ways, unintended or otherwise. Its policy brief consolidates findings from the work of multiple European cities to provide Public Administrations - at national and international level – with practical recommendations and resources for fundamental areas of consideration when embarking on digital transformation. These include embedding ethical values in implementation plans to protect people’s rights, to a focus on digital inclusion to ensure no-one is left behind, as well as working collaboratively with stakeholder ecosystems to build widescale trust and transparency in decisions and results. Leveraging UnLock’s resources helps guide adopters towards the creation of a tailored trustworthy framework for the responsible deployment of new technologies for evidence-based decision making, taking into account ethical, social and legal considerations. These include a set of rules, governance mechanisms and tools which guide technology design and development in a manner that protects the rights of all citizens. By blending technology and data with strong leadership, engagement and collaboration the value of digital technologies for better decision making can truly be UnLocked. “DUET is proud of its collaboration with ETAPAS, URBANAGE and Polivisu” said Lieven Raes of Digital Flanders, the coordinator of DUET. “We encourage everyone working in public administrations using Digital Twins, AI and Cloud to read our brief and think about how they can better roll-out their projects in ways that improve efficiencies, securely manage data assets, and foster greater citizen trust and engagement”. The brief can be accessed via Zenodo.

In celebration of France's recent take over of the presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Ministry of Transformation and Public Service, and the Inter-Ministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM) created a "Tech for Government Pitch" competition to bring together all Member States around the topic of public administration digital transformation. On the 10th January 2022, 13 European teams each with an innovative solution were asked to present and defend their projects in front of a jury of European digital transformation experts. After the event the jury shortlisted just 7 projects, including DUET, to proceed to the next stage. - Bürokratt (Estonia) - Federal information management (Germany) - DUET: Digital Urban European Twin (Belgium) - Mina Ombud – (Sweden) - ID.gov.pt (Portugal) - Suomi.fi Quality tools (Finland) - Dutch National Key Registry of the Subsurface (the Netherlands) The second stage involves the shortlisted teams pitching their solutions to 27 Ministers from across all Member States during the European Union Public Administration Network (EUPAN) Ministerial meeting. The meeting will be held on March 17th 2022 in Strasbourg where initiative delegates will be able to pitch their solutions in person. In case of unforeseen events finalist teams are also asked to prepare a 3 and a half minute video to support their entry. DINUM states, "this event, in an unprecedented format, will make it possible to promote cooperation between European administrations on the theme of the digital transformation of the public sector and to give visibility to concrete digital products, of European interest, with a strong potential for replicability".

On 9th and 10th of December 2021, DUET together with AI4PublicPolicy, Decido, IntelComp and Policy Cloud co-organised the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit: 2021 . The aim of the Summit was to help participants explore major digital challenges, trends and opportunities for improving public sector decision making to deliver healthier, happier places to live and work. Born out of 5 innovation projects the Evidence Based Policymaking in Europe Summit: 2021, focused on relevant use cases data and tools for decision making in key areas of government, including mobility, engagement, climate change and health. Attended by over 150 people, the first day was dedicated to understanding how city data can be leveraged to help solve specific societal problems. Andrea Halmos from Living-in.eu kicked off the event by taking audience on a journey through relevant EU policy and encouraged participants to be part of the declaration on joining forces to boost sustainable digital transformation in cities and communities in the EU. Lieven Raes, the DUET Coordinator, introduced the concept of digital twins and stressed the importance of ensuring the adoption of new technologies are always use case driven. The full plenary session with all speakers, provided by MEDIASHAREiQ.com, can be viewed below. The second day focused on the innovative tools created by the projects for evidence-based policy making. Launched by guest speakers from the Open & Agile Smart Cities network, Engineering and OpenAIRE (see recording below) the day explored the real-life impact generated by the pilot cities in the 5 projects. DUET featured heavily throughout the two days, and all session recordings, made by MEDIASHAREiQ.com are available on this website. For notification of the 2022 Summit please sign up for DUET news in the footer below.

DUET's Traffic Modeller web app won an annual 2021 Smart Cities competition, hosted by CTU in Prague, in the category: "Project for a city with 50-200 thousand inhabitants". The award ceremony for the winners of the competition, now in its 5th year, took place on December 2, 2021 at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics CTU. The announcement of the results was hosted by Jakub Železný, a moderator of Czech Television. The competition is organized by the non-governmental non-profit organization Smart City Innovations Institut, z.ú. The competition was open to cities, regions, regions, private companies or individuals and smart solutions in the form of a project, model or vision (i.e. even projects whose implementation is still in preparation) could be submitted. All submitted solutions were evaluated by the competition's expert jury, which consisted of 26 Smart City experts from the public sector, municipalities, Smart City technology leaders and academia. In their evaluation, the judges took into account the solution's compliance with the Smart City principles and pillars, which included the criteria of feasibility, sustainability, proven savings, open data and public involvement. Awards in the competition were given in a total of ten categories. In each category, two finalists were selected by the jury who received the highest rating from the Expert Jury in that category. The City of Pilsen took the top two places in its category, as the second place went to the project of the Information Technology Administration of the City of Pilsen: "City IoT Network on the LoRaWan Platform". Traffic Modeler is currently developed in cooperation with RoadTwin s.r.o. and has become the main pillar of the European projects PoliVisu and DUET, in which the city of Pilsen acts as a pilot city. A new version of the app will be available in 2022, offering a range of new features. Among the most important ones will be the possibility of adding new roads to the traffic model and experimenting with intersection turning bans. Traffic Modeller is a traffic modeller that can simulate traffic restrictions (and their various combinations) over the traffic model of Pilsen and display the modelled traffic volumes on the city's roads at selected days and times of the day. The simulated traffic constraints (or new road design) can also be visualized as a comparison of traffic volumes between the experiment and the base model. The created experiments can be shared with other Traffic Modeler users or published for public use, as in the case of the agreed planned closures in Pilsen on the website: https://intenzitadopravy.plzen.eu/. Read more about the web application for city transport workers in a separate article (CZ). Daniel Beran (RoadTwin) and Stanislav Štangl (SITmP) with prizes for winning the Smart Cities 2021 competition

Five H2020 e-governance projects (DUET, AI4PublicPolicy, Decido, IntelComp and Policy Cloud) join efforts in the Data Driven Policy Cluster to publish a Roadmap for using European cloud infrastructures for public administrations and policy making. Digital technologies have changed the world. Today people expect faster, seamless, on-demand services from their providers, and Governance is no exception. For better public services which make life easier for citizens. Public Sector decision making needs to become more agile, breaking down data silos to combine day-to-day tactical decisions with longer term policies and strategies. Disruptive technologies such as Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High Performance Computing (HPC) unlock new opportunities for decision making through visualisations, simulations, predictions and intelligence that enhance transparency, increase public support and involvement, and optimise resources, handling data sources too large or complex to be handled by conventional tools. Using the European cloud infrastructure for public administrations To support this transformation, DUET, AI4PublicPolicy, Decido, IntelComp and Policy Cloud, five pan-European projects and initiatives dedicated to using cloud for data-driven policy, have joined forces to raise awareness about their cross cutting work on data and cloud-based tools for data-driven decision making. The joint roadmap aims to describe how the Data Driven Policy Cluster contributes to using the European cloud infrastructure for public administrations, encouraging the public sector decision makers to embrace digital disruption and new innovative technologies in order to make more sustainable policy based on real-time information, predicted impact and citizen input. Download the roadmap.

Smart City Expo and World Congress honored the DUET Digital Urban European Twin project as the technology enabler of 2021! DUET, Europe’s first local digital twin project for evidence-based policy making is the winner of the 2021 ‘Enabling Technologies Award’ presented by the Smart Cities Expo and World Congress. The award provides global recognition of DUET’s mission to support local governments everywhere by enabling them to better visualise, simulate and predict the impact of both complex daily operational decisions and longer-term policies through integration of urban data into virtual replicas of cities. “This is a fantastic achievement for the DUET team which recognises the big ambition of our partner cities, Athens, Pilsen and the region of Flanders, to transform and improve services” said Lieven Raes, manager at Digitaal Vlaanderen and coordinator of the DUET project. “By focusing on specific use cases, from healthy mobility to spatial planning and citizen engagement, we are able to create multi-disciplinary risk-free digital experimentation environments, which make it easy for local administrations to effectively model and explore policies before rolling them out on the ground.” DUET’s innovative Digital Twins consume open data and data models from different sources within a city and integrate them with new technology capabilities including artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to provide a replica city environment where policy experimentation can safely take place. “I couldn’t think of a more appropriate award,'' said Susie Ruston McAleer of 21c, a founding partner of DUET present at the awards ceremony. ‘Over the next five years the use of digital twins will revolutionise how cities aggregate data adhering to legal and ethical principles, and intuitively make it understandable. This enabling technology will unlock the real potential in open data for driving future decisions for cities whilst simultaneously enhancing the current city experience for all.” The annual World Smart City Awards is a prestigious international competition that seeks to recognize pioneering projects, ideas and strategies making cities around the world more livable, sustainable, and economically viable. The awards go to the most innovative and successful projects being implemented and developed in the fields of data and technology. For more information on DUET visit www.digitalurbantwins.com

Description Just imagine the potential of connected and interoperable digital solutions for smart communities that can leverage the acceleration of digital and data economy. The European way of digital transformation of cities and communities represents a clear focus on building interoperable digital solutions that create the conditions for re-using data, in particular looking at the economic value out of it and accelerating the uptake of AI at local level. There is a clear commitment in the EU to move from siloed and unconnected initiatives towards interoperability and standardization of data models and towards open urban data platforms, which are expected to accelerate local economies. Nevertheless, according to recent studies, Data is still tremendously under-utilized and shared: only 7% of government departments’ data has been open for public access in most countries worldwide and today only 12% of city data is analyzed and used for decision making and management. The session will present the perspectives and desiderata from relevant keynote speakers at three different perspectives: policy makers, local public administrations and the private sectors. These will be commented and discussed in the panel matching with the experience on the field from projects and initiatives at EU level focusing on data management/sharing and AI, aiming at the implementation of Public Data Spaces and considering the actual relevant regulations and the upcoming ones (e.g. AI Regulation). The Data Driven Policy Cluster AI4PublicPolicy, PolicyCloud, DECIDO, IntelComp and Policy Cloud, five pan-European projects and initiatives dedicated to using cloud for data-driven policy, have joined forces in the Data Driven Policy Cluster, to raise awareness on their cross cutting work on data and cloud-based tools for data-driven policymaking. Cecilia Cabello (FECYT, IntelComp) will represent the Data Driven Policy Cluster in the Enabling Data economy for Local Communities session at EBDVF2021. Showcasing the cluster's efforts in fostering public sector decision makers to embrace digital disruption and new innovative technologies to make more sustainable policy based on real-time information, predicted impact and citizen input. Register here for the event.