The HowTo innovation demonstrates distinctiveness in crucial areas:

Continuous and Tailored Skill Enhancement: It introduces micro-e courses guiding citizens in digital service usage. Also, it trains public servants to navigate new platforms effectively, offering focused and continuous skill enhancement.

Community-Driven Learning: Establishing Communities of Practice fosters collaboration, knowledge sharing, and problem-solving among employees. This collaborative approach enriches collective capabilities, departing from traditional siloed learning.

Comprehensive Digital Empowerment: Addressing citizens and public servants, it offers digital courses, enhancing skills for a proficient society. This holistic approach ensures inclusivity and sustainability, distinguishing it from singularly focused initiatives.

This innovation’s multifaceted digital literacy approach caters to diverse societal levels, providing tailored learning and fostering a more interconnected community.

HowTo has successfully offered specialized courses to citizens and public servants, tailored to their roles within the Greek public sector.
The implementation phase involves the execution of various micro e-courses and specialized sessions, to equip both citizens and public employees with essential skills for navigating digital services and platforms effectively. Additionally, the establishment of Communities of Practice fosters collaboration among employees, enhancing their collective capabilities.
More than 4,300 citizen specialists have been trained and certified and more than 6,000 public servants have been trained and supported through the community for using newly developed digital systems. More than 3 million citizens/year since 2021 accessed the platform.
The project's focus is on ensuring widespread digital literacy among citizens and proficiency among public servants and the evaluation phase, which is underway to gauge the effectiveness and impact of these initiatives.

The innovation process involved diverse collaborators. Citizens actively engaged in courses, ensuring the user-centric design of digital services. Government officials played a pivotal role, receiving specialized training to facilitate effective service delivery. Civil society organizations contributed insights, fostering community-centric learning through Communities of Practice. Companies partnered by providing expertise in digital platforms, empowering citizens and public servants.

Citizens enriched skills via tailored courses, navigating government platforms adeptly. Officials honed proficiency in new systems, enhancing service delivery. Civil society embraced collaboration in Communities of Practice, refining service execution. Companies added expertise, ensuring innovation relevance and societal empowerment. All benefited with improved digital literacy, collaboration, and service efficiency, fostering a connected, proficient community.

The HowTo portal (howto.gov.gr) witnessed substantial success and acceptance. During the pandemic, training efforts accelerated, supported by micro-e courses, especially on pertinent topics like vaccination procedures, reaching a monthly high of 643,000 unique visitors in November 2021.
The communities platform (communities.digi.gov.gr) hosts two large communities (employees of Citizens Service Centers-CSS and editors of the Registry of Administrative Procedures-Mitos), gathering more than 2,000 users and providing continuous training and support.
To increase platform engagement and user acceptance we have to add the enhanced confidence of users in utilizing the new services and the improved skills displayed by the public servants.

The HowTo portal faced hurdles in training and certifying a large pool of professionals. Managing the surge in online participation caused operational challenges. The training of 3000 employees in the new information system of the Citizen Service Centers, within a month, demanded careful content and activity designs, increased resources, and community support. Despite challenges, it's operational in 1000+CSCs, continuously updating the micro-course with new functionalities. Responsive actions focused on scalability, improving efficiency, and leveraging community support for effective training. The initiative remains dynamic, adapting to evolving user and organizational needs.

For an innovation like HowTo, a robust infrastructure supporting seamless online training is vital. Clear policies facilitating quick adoption and adaptation are crucial. Strong leadership ensuring active engagement and ongoing guidance is necessary. Adequate human and financial resources for scalability are pivotal. Additionally, fostering a culture valuing continuous learning and digital literacy fuels sustained motivation, enhancing the innovation's success. Constant iteration, stakeholder involvement, and adaptation are also key to meeting evolving user needs and staying relevant in a dynamic digital landscape.

The HowTo innovation hasn't been replicated yet to address similar challenges in other domains. However, its adaptability could be applied in various organizations. Its potential lies in providing tailored digital courses and fostering community-based learning for different sectors, enhancing digital literacy. Its scalability permits use by smaller agencies seeking efficient digital integration. This model could benefit larger governments aiming to bridge digital divides and upskill their workforce. Other organizations could leverage this approach to empower users and optimize service delivery, fostering a culture of continuous learning. Although not yet replicated, its transferability makes it promising for future adoption.

The HowTo project gave crucial lessons to us and others working on similar initiatives. Agility in adapting to scale is vital, especially when faced with surges in participation. Leveraging community support for training proved instrumental in ensuring effectiveness and user engagement. Continuous evolution is key; integrating new functionalities while being responsive to user needs fosters sustained relevance. Additionally, embedding a culture of learning and adaptability aids in refining offerings to meet evolving demands. Successful initiatives demand proactive responses to challenges, emphasizing scalability, community-driven support, and a dynamic, evolving approach to sustain innovation's relevance.

The HowTo platform contains 19 courses for citizens 13 for public servants and 5 courses for open-source platforms used for communication, collaboration, and learning. It is based on the open-source software Moodle (https://moodle.org/).
The community platform is based on the open-source software Discourse (https://www.discourse.org/) and is available at https://communities.digi.gov.gr/
The core team behind HowTo comprises 4 educators (1 with ICT skills for setting up the platforms) and 3 community experts who carried out the project load. The size of the team compared to the impact it achieved in training hundreds of thousands of citizens and thousands of public servants demonstrates the disruptive effect of the innovation.