The GovTech Lab is a joint initiative of the Ministry for Digitalisation and its technological arm, the Government IT Centre (CTIE). The GovTech Lab aims to encourage and support a culture of innovation and change within administrations in order to rethink existing procedures and operational flows, whilst integrating principles such as digital by default, design thinking or service by design into the development of new solutions.
“One of the strategic areas of focus of the ministry concerns the development of eGovernment solutions and the GovTech Lab will be an essential tool in this field”, declared Marc Hansen during the presentation. “The key words of the Lab can be summed up like this: experiment, exchange, innovate”, he added.
GovTechs are perceived as facilitators in exchanges between public administrations and citizens or businesses and between administrations themselves.
Through open innovation, the GovTech Lab calls on knowledge from outside the State by bringing on innovative ideas, skills or technologies from companies, start-ups, freelancers, students or researchers who want to support and strengthen public services innovation.
The GovTech Lab’s missions
The GovTech Lab defined three missions to meet the objective pursued by the Ministry for Digitalisation and the CTIE:
- Accelerate innovation at State level through calls for challenges and calls for solutions;
- Creating a Govtech community by organising specialised events;
- Becoming the reference and meeting place for state agents interested in GovTech.
The first GovTech Lab call for solutions: Bye bye Robots!
The Minister Delegate for Digitalisation, Marc Hansen, officially launched the first GovTech Lab call for solutions: ‘Bye Bye Robots!’ (Deadline: 4 January 2021)
This call for solutions focuses on the development of an innovative solution dedicated to tell computers and humans apart when doing online procedures with the Luxembourg State. This solution is intended to replace the current CTIE system for verifying that the connection to online procedures is indeed made by a human being rather than automatic bots.
The new solution must be simple, innovative and appealing for the user and guarantee the required security standards.