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Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

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Educating youth about diversity and the importance of empathy is difficult and dull using traditional classroom methods. Our team of unpaid volunteers built an interactive fiction mobile game, where youths can experience life as somebody unlike themselves, make choices, and reflect on how we treat each other. The feedback has been tremendous - teachers, students, and even adults love the stories and our data analytics indicates real positive impact on individuals who have played the game.
The Government of the city of Lucerne is piloting a new "digital cooperative" model, which allows public sector, private sector and citizens to contribute with data and get remunerated (financially or otherwise). Through this digital coopoerative, the population is able to tackle important and/or urgent issues that affect all its residents using data-driven decisions. For the initial stage, the data and issue tackled is related to mobility.
Digitalization of government often refers an individual project but should include on-going projects. Our city has been building the foundation that allows us to digitalize pubic services simultaneously. Shibuya collects city data and make it open so that innovators could collaborate with us. Secondly we educate our people. Shibuya provides digital devices to children and senior citizens. Thirdly, we let startups to test their product in the city. Finally we will institutionalize the actions.
Impact Canada Challenges have incentivized innovative solutions in the areas of climate action, housing, food, and health. A quasi-experimental impact assessment approach uses tax data (available in most countries) to assess the effectiveness of Challenges by profiling Challenge participants and comparing business performance indicators of Challenge participants vs. non-participants. Requiring only the participant’s business number, this is a no burden, comparative, long-term measurement plan.
Shanghai Data Exchange (SDE) has initiated a new business racing track of data factor market. SDE has independently developed a data trading system named niDts Intelligent Data Trading System, which provides efficient, convenient, transparent and secure data trading services, enabling the market development of data as a production factor, and fueling the digital transformation of economy, life and governance.
A problem for companies and owners of companies is that they need to engage with many different authorities to conduct their business. Instead of building solutions in a siloed approach we aim to build into the ecosystem by integrating different actors and enabling the business to control their own data using blockchains and digital wallets. This is both a new approach and use of a combination of new technologies that benefits the companies.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, relief organizations and government agencies lacked data about events on the ground and struggled to mount an effective response. New methods of event detection were urgently needed. A research team comprised of country experts and computational social scientists created a Twitter-based event detection system that provides geo-located event data on humanitarian needs, displaced persons, human rights abuses and civilian resistance in near real-time.
Countries in the Western Balkans created digital infrastructure to support transparent business operation and prevent fraud in their Common Regional Market. The official registries from 5 countries in the Western Balkans created a digital platform, connecting all official legal and financial data about companies, connected entities, blocked bank accounts and sanctioned persons, bridging different legislations, languages and currencies. The platform won the 2022 OECD/SIGMA/ReSPA award.
Digital transformation is a long-term journey that involves complex changes. One of the challenges is how we evaluate the progress. We are inspired by the quote, "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it". Most of Catalonia's municipalities cannot do a digital assessment. The Digital Maturity Index provides an evaluation turnkey solution for local governments. It is based on open data, and it has a clear focus on public value impact.
The Future Tech Challenge (FTC) is a pilot initiative led by DPER to connect and collaborate across the wider ecosystem, and engage in transformative innovation by experimenting with, and applying new technology to address pressing public sector problems and opportunities that deliver improved services to the public. Drive innovation using emerging technology, enhance collaboration, meet National strategic priorities, generate knowledge & learnings and develop prototyped solutions.