The Digital Transition partnership Programme was presented at SOFIA’s PLACE in the exhibition area of Webit.Festival Europe 2018. The partnership is part of the EU initiative Urban agenda for the EU. Sofia was selected as a co-coordinator of the partnership at the end of 2016 with Estonia and Oulu, Finland.
The project’s coordinators Veronika Manova and Mika Rantakokko presented the objectives of the program – to identify and implement new measures and solutions for improving the legislation in Europe, to finance urban policies and training programs to facilitate digital transition in Europe.
The European administrations, together with society and businesses, should envisage in the action plan of the program activities to provide better public services to citizens, promote innovation and create new business opportunities for growth for the European cities.
The team of Sofia Investment Agency initiated the presentation of the project at Webit 2018 because of the importance of its goals for the future of cities, society and business, as well as its similarities with the goals of Digital Cities Challenge (DCC), another project of the European Commission which Sofia will take part in. The DCC initiative aims to support the 15 European cities in initiatives for digital transformation of the urban environment and society. The implementation of the project is coordinated by a team of Sofia Investment Agency. Joint working meetings with the Digital Transition team are scheduled in July and September, as stakeholders in both projects are the institutions, the academic community and the private business. We believe that their guidelines and cooperation in the initiatives will help to identify specific implementation projects that are beneficial to the goals of both programs.
The development of the action plan for the partnership on Digital Transition is in its final stage. An introduction to the draft action plan is available here and the presentation of the coordinators Veronika Manova and Mika Rantakokko at Webit 2018 – here.
You can read more about the Digital Transition partnership on the EU’s website for the program: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/digital-transition
Introduction to the Draft Action Plan of the Partnership on Digital Transition is available here.
Locally, the initiative is coordinated by Sofia Development Association – http://www.sofia-da.eu