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Research team seeks policy makers and/or academics to develop an e-government services platform for citizens and businesses.

Country of Origin: Greece
Reference Number: TOGR20170124003
Publication Date: 24 January 2017

Summary

A Greek research team is developing  a pioneering pilot e-government project involving public procurement at local authority level. The findings aim to facilitate the development of a centralized platform for the provision of high-quality e-government services to citizens and local businesses. The team seeks policy makers and/or academic scholars interested in developing the platform as part of an e-governance strategy, through a research cooperation agreement.

Description

The increasing EU policy attention for the innovation potential of public procurement, only recently, has led to some actual public procurement initiatives by a limited number of Member States. Seeking more innovative procurement solutions can generate benefits for the public and the private sector as well as the wider society.

The Greek research team is working on a pilot project that was launched by the Central Union of the Greek Municipalities, aiming at the development of a centralized platform for the provision of high-quality e-government services to citizens and local businesses.

A key element in the above project aims to shed light on the implementation stages of an innovative procurement practice. First, it attempts to address the lack of empirical studies by offering evidence on the role of PPI (Public Procurement for Innovation) in the field of e-governance. Second, it is investigating a quite complex ICT project that involves a variety of actors from both the demand and the supply side and it offers a rich illustration of the various procurement stages and specific challenges encountered, providing some interesting policy implications. Third, the empirical part of the above project is based on case study work guided by in-depth interviews mainly with the key supply actors of the project.

The advantages of this method include a value-added e-government service that also achieves a more efficient management of resources, organizational processes and significant economies of scale for local authorities. In both the Greek and EU contexts, this new procurement approach may lead to significant initial cost savings while allowing for the systematic upgrade and continuous support of the municipalities’ e-government systems. A significant positive side effect of the project is that it has created opportunities for knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, while its main added value lies in its long-term potential as its design characteristics offer high possibilities of reusability and transferability.

The research team is looking for co-operations with policy makers and/or other academic scholars aiming to provide e-government services to citizens and businesses through a research cooperation agreement.

Advantages and Innovations

The development of a centralized platform offers an update of the public sector as well as an improvement of the public services. This improvement has to do with the competitiveness of firms in future markets, the stimulation of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship and the tackling of current societal challenges that are of significant importance. Also, it provides value-added e-government services while achieving a more efficient management of resources and organizational processes as well as significant economies of scale for local authorities.

Stage Of Development

Prototype available for demonstration

Requested partner

The research team is looking for cooperation with policy makers, such as representatives of the government, the municipality or decision makers, or academic scholars who want to collaborate on this project concerning e-government services for citizens and businesses in general through a research cooperation agreement, or in the framework of a relevant call for proposals of an EU funding programme.