Marc Hansen, Luxembourg's Minister Delegate for Digitalisation; Credit: MinDigital

On Thursday 24 March 2022, Luxembourg's Minister Delegate for Digitalisation, Marc Hansen, officially inaugurated the premises of the GovTech Lab, located in the administrative building of the Government IT Centre (Centre des technologies de l'information de l'État - CTIE).

The GovTech Lab, the result of a collaboration between the Ministry for Digitalisation and the CTIE, now has its own physical space dedicated to co-creativity and collaboration in order to support and strengthen innovation within public services. Its layout has been designed according to a philosophy of openness and sharing: an open space, divisible into several "niches" that can accommodate groups of different sizes, according to the needs of each event. The concept aims to promote a positive emulation of ideas and sharing of experience.

This place of meeting and exchange will be able to accommodate companies and startups, the self-employed, students and researchers, as well as public sector agents wishing to collaborate on digital public services corresponding to the virtues of digital government.

During the inauguration, Minister Delegate Hansen recalled the vision and missions of the GovTech Lab, which aims to support a culture of innovation and change within the Luxembourg State to rethink existing procedures and operational flows. The key words are: experiment, exchange and innovate.

The GovTech Lab thus aims to bring together a GovTech community in Luxembourg through specialised events organised on its premises. These events could take the form of theme days, co-creative workshops, hackathons or training for State agents, among other things. It was also designed to facilitate exchanges and stimulate creativity between administrations and / or CTIE teams in order to experiment and test new ideas and technologies.

Finally, the Minister Delegate recalled that in order to accelerate innovation with the State, the GovTech Lab currently has three calls for solutions in progress: the "Trust My Data" call, dedicated to verifiable digital certificates such as the certificate of residence; the "Virtual Meeting Room", for a videoconferencing solution on MyGuichet.lu; a legal study in the form of a "SpeedUP" procedure for a digital power of attorney which would allow administrative procedures to be carried out in line on MyGuichet for a third party.