Iniciative #6 – Collaborative Hub for Digital Transformation in Portugal

Rationale

Portugal possesses significant potential for advancing digital transformation, equipped with skilled human resources, centres of scientific excellence, innovative companies, and a constantly modernising and digitising public administration.

To achieve this potential, it is essential to combine efforts and encourage collaboration among different sectors and entities.

This initiative aims to create such synergies by bringing together skills and capabilities to develop innovative and effective solutions that address the emerging needs of society and drive growth and competitiveness in the country.

Details

The initiative proposes the establishment of a Collaborative Hub that brings together Public Administration, businesses, research centres, higher education institutions, and other relevant entities to develop new innovative digital solutions.

This Hub will contribute to positioning Portugal as a centre of excellence for the experimentation and development of new digital solutions, particularly in emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Blockchain, Web3, Cloud, IoT, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Automation, among others.

The Hub will serve as a meeting point where real social and economic challenges, identified by the public sector in areas like climate transition, transportation, agriculture, and health, are transformed into opportunities for technological innovation.

The process  commences with Public Administration defining and detailing specific needs, translating them into clear requirements and guidance for the solutions to be developed. To address these challenges, the Hub encourages the creation of collaborative networks - partnerships between businesses, higher education institutions, and research centres - bringing together the necessary technical skills and resources to develop these solutions.

The Hub will establish synergies with collaborative laboratories (CoLABs), Technology and Innovation Centres (CTIs), as well as Technology Free Zones (ZLTs), Test Beds, sandboxes, and common data spaces. These collaborations will provide a dynamic and open environment for experimentation, which is essential for developing innovative and competitive solutions.

Collaborative networks will have access to funding for creating prototypes, conducting proofs of concept, and developing products and services that directly address identified issues. The objective is for these solutions to scale and be applied more broadly, or even exported, fostering the creation of new companies and business models that strengthen the innovation ecosystem in Portugal.