The UserCentriCities Summit debates the proactive provision of digital public services
The managing director of the AOC, Astrid Desset, attended the summit of UserCentriCities, organized by #TheLisbonCouncil and the Generalitat de Catalunya, which was held in the Administrative District, as part of the Smart City Expo.
The Generalitat de Catalunya is part of this consortium, together with 27 other members, who represent European cities and regions and which aims to create a network to share and generate resources between administrations to provide digital services focused on people.
Local authorities play a fundamental role in the provision of digital services because they are the administration closest to citizens. The aim of the day was to share how different cities and regions are progressing in detecting what citizens need and how the administration can respond to these needs, taking into account current challenges such as the pandemic, the energy crisis and the war between Russia and Ukraine
The general director of Digital Administration of the Generalitat of Catalonia participated in the session, Núria Espuny, the deputy mayor and head of digital transformation of Kyiv City Council, Petro Olenych, the Chief Information Systems Officer (CIO) of the Ukrainian capital, Oleg Polovynko, and the data manager of Helsinki City Council, Tomas Lehtinen.
Núria Espuny he highlighted the importance of data in the digital age and that it is the raw material for personalized proactive services centered on people. You can recover his speech at the UserCentriCities summit.
Petro Olenych showed how the Kyiv city app has become a means of saving lives, with information about attacks, bombs, survival tips, in addition to the typical digital services it offers as a city.
The director of The Lisbon Council consortium, David Osimo, pointed out the challenges that cities and regions share for the coming years:
Building proactive digital services must be a priority, delivering on Berlin's declaration of delivering people-centred services.
Make aid to vulnerable people automatic by 2030.
It is necessary to ensure that European, national and regional legislation is not only prepared for the digital scenario but for proactive services.
Clarify that the GDPR (data protection regulation) does allow for proactive public services.
Provide support for improving data quality
Strengthen the European interoperability framework linked to decentralized identity (persistent unique identifiers), as well as the review of eIDAS
Launch data-driven pilot tests to solve social challenges
Proactively measure digital maturity (European benchmarking)
On the other hand, Tomas Lehtinen, emphasized the importance of continuing to advance with data openness, knowledge management and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence or chatbots.
