Pioneers is pleased to announce the former Italian Government Commissioner for Digital Transformation Diego Piacentini will be speaking at GovTech.Pioneers in Vienna next week. His talk is entitled Innovative States.
Piacentini brings recent experience of high-level digital transformation to the stage, following the term he served from August 2016 to November 2018. Reporting directly to the Prime Minister, he founded the Government Digital Transformation Team, building it to over 30 people working on key digitalisation processes in Italy’s public administration.
He is currently a member of the Expert Advisory Group (EAG) established to provide strategic guidance on the OECD’s 2-year, multidisciplinary project on ‘Going Digital: Making the Transformation Work for Growth and Well-being’. This project aims to help policymakers better understand the digital revolution that is taking place across different sectors of the economy and society as a whole.
Before working in government, Piacentini was Senior Vice President of the senior executive team at Amazon.com, responsible for all international retail operations and reporting directly to Jeff Bezos. Prior to that he was also a Vice President of Apple EMEA.
We’re also pleased to welcome Austrian Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs Margarete Schramböck to our stage. Her talk is titled Digital State of Austria 2.0.
Before moving into government, she worked as CEO of Dimension Data Austria and then of A1 Telekom Austria. She took up her current role in early 2018.
We also have a few exciting details to announce for our startup pitching competition. Following the new-look final round we trialled at Mobility.Pioneers, we’ve adapted the challenge somewhat for GovTech.Pioneers.
With four finalists instead of two, the category winners will each get to answer questions from the jury on stage. The twist is that the pitching startups will hear each question together – but only the one that hits the buzzer first gets to answer it. Each startup can answer a maximum of two questions, so they’ll have to choose wisely.
While the finalist startups won’t repeat the pitches that got them to the last round, they will get to deliver a 30-second summary after the jury grilling.
In the first round, meanwhile, we’ll use the Mobility.Pioneers system once again. That’s where the startup only gets the full allocation of time to complete their pitch if the jury likes their opening enough to hit their buzzer.
As for the startups who’ll be taking on this challenge, we’re happy to announce those we’ve selected to pitch. Already winners after emerging from over 270 applicants, these are the companies who’ll compete in each of four categories. The winner of each will advance to the final round.
Citizen Collaboration: CivilCops, DELTA Smart Technologies, Publidata, City Seeders.
Education Tech: Polycular, Edulai, Think Smart, Simlabit.
General Govtech: Evrotrust, Unigraph, Urbix, Avokaado.
Cyber Security: FindBUG, Mimirium, Relate Data, LogSentinel.
Selected startups will also be taking part in a variety of workshops the day before the event itself. These have been organized by Pioneers and a number of our GovTech.Pioneers partners. Topics covered include Artificial Intelligence & Automation, Digital Ecosystems and Citizen Collaboration.
There are still a few places left for GovTech.Pioneers next week. Head here to join us at Vienna City Hall on Tuesday (April 2nd).
GovTech.Pioneers is supported by the Austrian Federal Computing Center (BRZ), STARTeurope, the Austrian PPPI Service Center (IÖB), the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance, the City of Vienna, Digital City Wien, Urban Innovation Vienna, the Vienna Business Agency, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT).
