Author: Jet Klaver
Nearly three years into the first round of GovTech4All, we have accumulated something more valuable than outputs: hard-won insight. Some of our choices worked brilliantly. Others taught us through friction. Below, we share the seven most important lessons from SGA1 — not as a polished success story, but as an honest guide for anyone navigating the intersection of public administration and technology innovation.
Procurement: Rethink procurement as an innovation journey
Design contests, startup challenges, and open calls consistently outperformed traditional procurement procedures. The shift was conceptual as much as procedural: instead of predefining solutions, public administrations learned to articulate problems — lowering barriers for startups and SMEs while staying legally sound. Procurement, reimagined this way, is associated with higher participation, better-quality solutions, and stronger alignment between public needs and market capabilities.
Ecosystem: Ecosystems are prerequisites for effective GovTech delivery
Successful pilots did not operate in isolation. They were embedded in carefully constructed innovation ecosystems — bringing together public authorities, startups, intermediaries, academia, and policy actors with clearly defined roles and expectations. Reducing fragmentation through shared frameworks and coordination across borders proved essential. Ecosystem maturity and trust are not pleasant side effects of good implementation; they are measurable success factors that must be deliberately built.
Scaling: Technical readiness is only part of the scaling equation
Maturity and readiness models emerged as a shared methodological backbone across SGA1. These models integrate technical, organisational, regulatory, societal, and interoperability dimensions — because the adoption barriers that actually stop scaling are usually institutional, not technical. Using multidimensional assessment to identify bottlenecks early allowed partners to make evidence-based decisions about when to scale up and when to redesign.
Openness: Open-source and reusability are strategic, not just technical
Developing open-source components, shared frameworks, and reusable digital assets is not a developer preference — it is a strategic principle. It supports interoperability, reduces duplication, and enables public administrations to build on each other's work. Partners came to see their contributions not as isolated deliverables, but as building blocks for future phases and other Member States — directly linked to digital sovereignty, transparency, and long-term sustainability.
Community: Informal collaboration is operational infrastructure
Beyond formal governance, it was the informal and semi-formal moments: co-creation workshops, peer exchanges, community events, in-person meetings, that built the trust necessary to overcome differences in administrative culture and national systems. Community-building turned out to be an operational necessity, not an optional add-on. In complex, cross-border initiatives, this is especially true: shared goals need shared relationships to survive.
Governance: No political buy-in means no lasting progress
Across the consortium, lack of political anchoring was explicitly linked to delays, reduced scope, and pilot termination. Where early alignment with political leadership and senior management was secured, decision-making was faster, priorities were clearer, and implementation was smoother. GovTech innovation is a governance challenge as much as it is a technical one — and treating it as otherwise is one of the costliest mistakes a programme can make.
Resilience: Setbacks are data, not defeats
Halted pilots, shifting priorities, partner withdrawal — these happened. What distinguished mature GovTech practice was not the absence of setbacks, but the ability to pivot, adjust scope, and redirect effort while maintaining shared objectives. A learning-oriented mindset builds resilience against uncertainty and complex regulatory environments. The organisations that progressed furthest were the ones that treated every stumble as actionable information.
A maturing European approach
Taken together, these seven lessons point toward a more mature European GovTech model — one characterised by innovation-friendly procurement, ecosystem thinking, multidimensional readiness assessment, openness, collaborative governance, and institutional preparedness. National contexts differ considerably across the consortium, but the convergence of these practices suggests they form a credible foundation for European-level reference models and future policy guidance. SGA1 was not the end of the story. It was the evidence base for what comes next.