Sofia Took Part in the 2nd City Academy Seminar for the European Commission’s Digital Cities Challenge
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The Second Academy Seminar of the Digital cities Challenge project took place on May 16-17 in Brussels. Sofia took part as a participating city, one of the first seven European cities selected for the Challenge. As a participating city, over the next year, Sofia will be receiving field advisory services by a dedicated expert, a local expert and a pool of thematic experts, as well as access to various online tools and face-to-face interaction with representatives of the digitally mature mentor cities.
Additional eight more Challenge cities joined the project as of February 2018, together with over 20 follower cities. Follower cities will have access to the methodology and the seminars but will not receive dedicated expert support.
The second Academy seminar concluded the Digital Vision and Ambition Phase of the project which included an online self-assessment from local Sofia-based stakeholders – over 30 representatives from IT companies, utilities, telecoms, academia and the Municipality participated in this phase. Based on the insights from the interviews with the stakeholders and after a series of discussions and workshops, we agreed on the formulation of a Vision and Ambition for Sofia and we drafted an assessment report of Sofia.
In May, in Brussels Sofia presented its Vision and Ambition for digitalization during a peer review session. A special thank you to Mr. Alexander Tzonev, CTO at Bulpros for representing the Sofia IT sector and for his active role in the discussions. A big thank you to all business, academia and Municipality representatives who guided the formulation of the Vision and ambition of Sofia through filling-in the self- assessment tool and participating in personal interviews and workshops. We would like to thank the city of Amsterdam and Nice for their constructive feedback, as well as our colleagues from Iași, Romania.
If you would like to learn more about the Phase one of the Digital Cities Challenge, the assessment of the digital maturity of Sofia via the self-assessment tool, please review the presentation of the Vision and Ambition of Sofia, that includes Sofia Mission for digitalization.
The next steps will include workshops in Sofia on 10 July 2018 and a second one in September for roadmap development and identification of preliminary investment priorities.
