Saioa Leguinagoicoa, Head of the Digital Strategy Service, reveals one of GovTech’s keys, touched upon at a meeting of experts held on March 7 at B Accelerator Tower. “Improvements such as working while taking into account the government’s dynamic ability to adapt to new situations; improvements in the design of services, putting citizens at the center… not just promoting digital capacities. Adopting this approach makes us put citizens’ needs, problems, and desires at the center of service design”.

This shift in mindset frees us from thinking of technology as an end, and allows us to start thinking of it as a means towards ongoing innovation.

Another of the keys to redesigning the government is changing contracting parameters. Historically, the government has assigned great importance to financial and solvency criteria, thus making the barriers for entry greater for small medium business (SMBs), startups and scaleups. In countries like Mexico and the United Kingdom, there is a kind of marketplace for contracting. Saioa tells us that this idea inspired them to consider (with prior approval) giving digital startups and SMBs opportunities by accepting different criteria from that which has historically been used.

The Biscay GovTech project is at the forefront of these trends, going “all in” when it comes to SMBs and start-ups, and coming up with clauses to encourage open innovation (albeit indirectly) in all the projects they contract.

This issue is important, because we’re in the midst of revamping the concept of the government and civil service. GovTech aims for open innovation, as well as ideas, creativity and technology as a means to achieve all this. In short, GovTech is an instrument (not the only one, but a very powerful one) that, with the help of technology, requires us to rethink the way services are designed.

To understand GovTech, one might imagine a giant mental map from which a thousand branches emerge; its main ones are innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, bootcamps, ideation, business ecosystems, SMBs, start-ups, and many, many more.

After reading this issue you’ll better understand what this GovTech thing that we’re talking about so much is all about, the challenges launched by GovTech Lab, and how winning start-ups reacted to them; what creative processes are behind an artistic piece, how this process is interdisciplinary, and, of course, everything else that’s going on in Biscay.

We hope that you enjoy reading it and that this governmental redesign process is as informative and illuminating for you as it was for our team.