To start, a demand-driven approach was adopted in order to orient the process of reform at answering the needs expressed by SONNETS stakeholders (individuals, businesses, civil servants). In this step, the activities conducted are: Phase 1 (desk-based/secondary research) focused on carrying out a desk research for identifying needs as well as for highlighting societal and public sector trends and challenges. The subsequent phases (2 and 3) assisted our efforts at verifying the authenticity of the information collected through multiple sources. Finally, phase 4 was vital to further prioritize and contextualize needs and potential solutions. In terms of outputs, the work conducted generated 2 types of assets: a methodology for the implementation of a need-based and demand-driven innovation approach, and a snapshot of the current situation present in the four countries involved in terms of priorities and innovation requirements, which has be translated into a brochure with the list of the needs identified.
In order to fully exploit the benefits of ICTs to help the public sector meet emerging societal needs, SONNETS has designed the SONNETS Innovation Identification Framework that will accelerate the modernization of the public sector through the identification and analysis of emerging technologies that hold the potential to transform the public sector into a technology leader and innovation carrier, addressing, at the same time, the most pressing needs of the citizenship through 7 steps: (i) needs Identification, which comprises the first step described above; (ii) Technology Identification, in which a long list of technologies and trends was elicited from the initial pool of material. This list was refined through step (iii) Technology Pre-selection and Analysis; step (iv) Technology Assessment aimed at supporting the conduction of an adapted SWOT analysis, which targeted on the one side to assess the impact of the identified technologies and trends in the domains originally met, and to point out, on the other, opportunities for their adoption, usage and promotion by the public sector as well as potentially involved challenges and threats; in step (v) Innovation Potential Identification, the innovation potential of the technologies and trends identified in previous steps was assessed against two basic components: impact and feasibility; (vi) Scenario Building sets the scene for the application of the identified technologies and trends, and their respective solutions, into 2 hypothetical scenarios: the probable Public Sector (a gradually self-improving Public Sector building on the developments of today) and the desirable one (a revamped, semi-federated Public Sector, embracing Open Innovation) and, finally step (vii) Results Validation pursues the validation of the findings by coupling offline validation with online feedback.
To conclude, SONNETS highlighted the gaps between the identified societal and public sector needs and the identified technological opportunities by using the multi-criteria assessment tool ‘Weighted-Bit Assessment Table (WBAT)’ to create the ‘to-do list’ with all necessary activities to implement the ICTs successfully. Based on these results, SONNETS has produced a Roadmap that puts forward 23 research and innovation directions that should be followed in order to reach the anticipated vision of reshaping and reforming the public sector into a technology leader and a key player in tackling societal challenges. These recommendations can be classified into 3 types of briefs: policy brief to inform policy makers about the necessary research needs to transform the public sector in an efficient and citizen-friendly service of the future; research brief to inform researchers about the actual technological and socio-economic research needs of the end user and technology brief to inform representatives of the public sector about new emerging ICT technologies and how these could improve the efficiency, simplify the processes and services of their day-to-day work and also help to transform the public sector to be more open and citizen-friendly.
