SMACITE project to foster collaboration between public sector and digital SMEs

If Europe is aiming at its own digital sovereignty, it should give a closer look at public procurement as a tool to support digital SMEs innovation ecosystem. As a matter of fact, the Public sector has a large purchasing power and it can act as first user of the innovation and pulling it to the market, by overcoming so called “market failures”.
 
“GovTech”, “Regulatory sandboxes” and “Interoperability” are just a few of the elements to be introduced in the process of procuring digital innovations, to make sure the solutions are scalable, comply with the EU legislation and support European SMEs in the delivery of their services and tools to European public administrations, no matter the country.
 
This ambitious swift from classic tendering procedures to “GovTech”, or co-design processes is possible only if public administrators and technicians from the private sector acquire the right digital skills and competences to be able to master such complexities.
 
The SMACITE project is creating curricula for Smart Technicians and Smart Engineers from both the public and the private sector, ensuring a more proactive role for the local administrations when it comes to the design and selection of digital services and tools, as well more opportunities of collaboration between local digital SMEs and administrations.
 
This whole process would bring benefits to the local community as an innovation ecosystem would be created, and help reaching European digital sovereignty goals, as the procurement process would leverage on the knowledge of existing European private actors.

To know more about the SMACITE project visit our website and subscribe to the newsletter to get the latest on Smart Cities skills!