Authors: 
Athanasios Papadakis; Antonio Filograna; Karel Jedlička; Jerónimo Arenas-García; Nikitas-Marinos Sgouros; Ilaria Fava; Marieke Willems

The convergence of Cloud, Big Data and AI has already resulted in major transformation across Government services, yet the process of policy making itself is often left behind. Digital technologies have changed the world. Today people expect faster, seamless, on-demand services from their providers, and the Government is no exception. For effective urban operations which make life easier for residents, workers and visitors, Public Sector decision-making needs to become more agile, breaking down data silos to combine day-to-day tactical decisions with longer term policies and strategies. Disruptive technologies such as Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High Performance Computing (HPC) unlock new opportunities for sustainable decision making through visualisations, simulations, and predictions that enhance transparency, increase public support and involvement, and optimise resources.

To support this transformation, Policy Cloud, Decido, AI4PublicPolicy, DUET, and Intelcomp pan-European projects and initiatives dedicated to using the cloud for data-driven policy, have joined forces in the Data Driven Policy Cluster. Together they explore major challenges, trends and opportunities to improve public sector decision making that will deliver healthier, happier places to live and work.

During the EGI 2022 workshop, the cluster will demonstrate technologies developed to advance decision making in the public sector. The cluster will engage the EGI2022 attendees in discussion on the state of the art of these technologies and their adoptability.  

This session aims to raise awareness on the cluster of projects and disruptive technologies they develop for the public sector. In addition, the session will foster collaboration between the EGI researchers and the public authorities in the decision making with the use of research data and advanced tools for the benefit of society.

The Data Driven Policy Cluster showcases the joint network of:

  • AI4PublicPolicy: AI for Public Policy (AI4PP) project is a joint effort of policy makers and Cloud/AI experts to unveil AI’s potential for automated,transparent and citizen-centric development of public policies. The project will deliver,validate and promote the AI4PublicPolicy Platform,offering innovative policy management on unique AI technologies. The AI4PublicPolicy Virtualized Policy Management Environment(VPME) integrated with EOSC facilitates access to the Cloud and HPC resources required to enable the project’s AI tools and to a wider use of the project’s developments.
  • DECIDO: the eviDEnce and Cloud for more InformeD and effective pOlicies (DECIDO) project aims to boost the use of EOSC by Public Authorities enabling innovation in the policy-making sector allowing cross-support and cross-collaboration,using secure compute and data intensive services. Decido involves citizens and local communities through co-creation activities for better targeted policies.
  • DUET: the Digital Urban European Twins (DUET) project is a EU initiative which leverages the advanced capabilities of cloud, sensor data and analytics in Digital Twins,to develop more democratic and effective public sector decision-making.DUET Digital Twins provide virtual city replicas which simplifies the understanding of complex interrelation between traffic, air quality, noise and other urban factors. Powerful analytics predict the impacts of potential change to make better evidence-based operational decisions and long-term policy choices.
  • IntelComp: develops a Competitive Intelligence Cloud/HPC Platform for AI-based Science, Technology and Innovation Policy-Making. Multi-disciplinary teams will co-develop analytics services, Natural Language Processing pipelines and AI workflows,exploiting EOSC open data and resources, HPC environments and federated operations at the EU, national and regional level. Ensuring a cooperative environment,different actors visualize, interact and analyze information. Through co-creation, IntelComp will adopt a living labs approach, engaging public policy makers, academia, industry, SMEs, local actors and citizens to explore, experiment with and evaluate STI policies. IntelComp is targeting domains aligned with the European Agenda and the Horizon Europe Missions:AI, Climate Change and Health.
  • PolicyCloud: exploits the potential of digitisation, big data and cloud to improve the modelling, creation and implementation of policies. Delivering a unique, integrated environment of datasets, data management, and analytic tools it addresses the full lifecycle of policy management in four thematic-areas (radicalisation, food-value chain, city environment, city services),leveraging the data management capabilities of the EOSC Initiative. The Project empowers the Citizens to contribute to data and policies related to their everyday-life. The onboarding of these solutions in the EOSC Portal offers a great opportunity to reach a wide audience.

Data Driven Cluster Projects presentations are now available. Learn more.