The ETAPAS Consortium is formed by 14 Partners from 8 different Countries including PAs, DIHs, IT firms, Research Organisations and universities.
Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF)
The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) is the executive body responsible for economic, financial and budget policy, planning of public investment, coordinating public expenditure and verifying its trends and tax system. MEF plays a central role in the IT enhancement process of the Italian public sector, and has participated in several EU projects, such as PoSeID-on and SUNFISH. Within the MEF, the Directorate of Information Systems and Innovation (DSII) provides IT services, information and data management to the entire Ministry and HR shared services to over 100 Italian public administrations through the NoiPA platform. The DSI also launched the “Cloudify NoiPA” digital transformation program aiming at creating the single and centralized staff management system of public administrations, by expanding the services offered and entities served - from 100 to 11,000. “Cloudify NoiPA” will allow NoiPA platform to reach up to 3.3 million civil servants in the country.
Role in the ETAPAS project
As Project Coordinator, MEF will lead WP1 “Project Management” and will be responsible for the overall management of the activities, including the financial and administrative coordination. Furthermore, MEF will also coordinate WP8 “Ethics requirements” ensuring the project alignment to ethical standards. MEF will also lead a use case (Task 4.2 Use Case 1: Ethically Responsible Big Open Data) which foresees the ETAPAS framework testing and the creation of a knowhow procedure for publishing Open Data in an ethical way. As the other partners, MEF will contribute to the dissemination and communication activities of the project.
Intellera Consulting Srl
Intellera Consulting Srl, former PwC Public Sector Srl, is a consulting firm which offers professional services of excellence to international and national institutions, administrations and companies. The firm aims to enhance the deep knowledge of the public sector’s dynamics and needs by making it an enabler for territorial and national development and growth.
Intellera Consulting Srl was born from the management buyout of PwC Public Sector Srl, the advisory line of PwC Italy dedicated to Public Administration and Healthcare consulting. Intellera was established at the end of July 2021 to continue adding value to the work performed by a network of about 700 professionals, with top-level expertise in organisational consulting offering professional services to public administrations and companies throughout Europe.
In seamless progression with our previous work as part of the PwC Network, Intellera’s staff has embarked on the new company bound by a single, common purpose – to use our expertise and deep knowledge of the public sector to help our clients improve and grow, both at the local and European level. We believe in human innovability, i.e., a humanistic approach to innovation that necessarily includes sustainability and a long-term vision. Intellera Consulting aims to use its multiannual expertise in this field, coupled with the use of technology, to demystify this uncertain era and provide meaningful solutions to our clients. Innovation, competence and passion represent our key values. We embrace these values in all typologies of service offered to EU Institution clients.
Role in the ETAPAS project
Intellera Consulting will be WP3 and WP7 leader and will cover the role of Technical Director of the ETAPAS project. In WP3 we will guarantee the correct implementation of the activities and, in particular, will contribute in the definition of a set of indicators to evaluate the social and ethical consequences entailed by the adoption of DTs in the Public Administrations and will provide measurement guidelines to tailor the indicators and metrics to the use case perimeter. In WP7, thanks to our network and ability to reach European and international markets will have a central role in the deployment of the dissemination, communication and exploitation strategies of the ETAPAS project. Finally, we will support the activities in WP6 for the RDT validation and, as contributor, will supervise the ethical principles and legal framework definition in WP2, as well as the ETAPAS prototype development in WP5.
2021.AI
founded in 2016 and currently employs +60 individuals in 4 offices, headquartered in Copenhagen. 2021.AI is an enterprise AI company that uses intelligence technology to solve business challenges across industries and sectors. 2021.AI’s Grace AI platform offers organizations of all sizes a functional and scalable AI solution to match their needs. We have an experienced, in-house software development and develops teams skilled in AI operations and applications. Our data science team works alongside an organization’s data journey from early model development, to deployment, and through the production life cycle. With Grace, organizations are provided with the most comprehensive AI governance and are guaranteed a secure platform with fair algorithms, traceable data, and explainable models.
Role in the ETAPAS project
2021.AI will develop and supply a platform for the assessment of the potential impact of disruptive technologies in order to uncover ethical and legal consequences, thus enabling Public Administration to make use of them (WP5). While current recent pen and paper ethical guidelines are a step forward, in order to support verification and automation of AI Governance, technology solution is necessary. Our solution consists of a transparent metadata layer that logs everything that happens in the disruptive technology development lifecycle into immutable and auditable data stores. The results can then be used in analyses of how disruptive technologies will impact the public sector (capital, labor, knowledge), incl. the benefits and risks associated with implementation.
SINTEF AS
SINTEF is Scandinavia's largest independent research organization and is a non-profit research institute wholly owned by the SINTEF Foundation. We employ more than 1700 people, most of whom are based in Trondheim and Oslo (Norway). SINTEF is multidisciplinary, with international top-level expertise in a wide range of technological and scientific disciplines, medicine and the social sciences. Our company vision is "technology for a better society", and it is an important aspect of our societal role to contribute to the creation of more jobs. SINTEF is represented in this consortium by the group Human-Computer Interaction at SINTEF Digital. SINTEF Digital has expertise in fields such as systems and service innovation, human-computer interaction, human-centred design, and studies of technology use.
Role in the ETAPAS project
SINTEFs main task in the project is the use-case involving the municipality chatbot Kari, conducted in close collaboration with Prokom. In this task, SINTEF will apply its general expertise in human-computer interaction and user-centred design, as well as its expertise on chatbot user experience drawn from several national research and innovation projects on chatbot technology and use. In the use-case task, SINTEF will lead the work on RTD framework and indicators validation, qualitative assessment, and use-case development and refinement.
Sem & Stenersen Prokom AS
Prokom was founded in 1921 and is today one of the main suppliers of digital solutions (such as websites, chatbots, booking systems, digital forms, etc.) to municipalities, county councils, and government organizations in Norway. Prokom is located in Oslo and employs about 50 people.
Role in the ETAPAS project
In the project, Prokom will be involved in the third use case (Municipality chatbot – Kari) implementation together with SINTEF. Indeed, Prokom is the creator of the municipality chatbot "Kommune-Kari", together with Boost.ai (supplier of the technology of the chatbot). The chatbot is employed in over 80 municipalities in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. The chatbot is under development in other European countries, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, and Spain. Prokom's experience with the public sector, and municipalities specifically, has enabled them to create one of the world's largest public-sector chatbots. All the development on the chatbot is done in close collaboration with the municipalities, which has proved to be one of the key factors of success for the product.
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - Information Technologies Institute
The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) is one of the largest research centers in Greece; top 1 in north Greece. It was founded in 2000 and is located in Thessaloniki. Its mission is to promote the triplet Research – Development – Innovation by conducting high quality research and developing innovative products and services while building strong partnerships with industry and strategic collaborations with academia and other research and technology organizations in Greece and abroad. More than 800 people work at CERTH with the majority being scientists. CERTH participates in ETAPAS through the Information Technologies Institute (ITI), a non-profit organization founded in 1998 and founding member of CERTH. CERTH/ITI is one of the leading Institutions of Greece in the fields of Informatics, Telematics and Telecommunications, with long experience in numerous European and national R&D projects.
Role in the ETAPAS project
CERTH will act as a strategic partner with profound experience on ethical and legal issues confrontation arising from its expertise in big data management and governance. CERTH main contribution concerns the use case of Public Organizations Multi-factor Misinformation Handling, to be implemented together with MUKA and for which CERTH will exploit its profound expertise on Big Data Analytics, Visual Analytics and Machine Learning. Moreover, CERTH will be responsible for the Quality Assurance and Risk monitoring, for the legal assessment of the use case 4, as well as will contribute to the development of the connectors needed to feed the ETAPAS Prototype. Finally, CERTH will also lead all aspects concerning platform testing, diffusing its technical knowledge and expertise in testing and the functionality of the platform in order to provide users with the results of the use cases by means of dashboards and reports.
Italian Institute of Technology
Italian Institute of Technology is a scientific research center established by law in 2003 by Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research and Ministry of Economy and Finance, in order to promote excellence in both basic and applied research and to facilitate the economic development at national level. IIT has a strong approach to technology transfer and vast experience in managing and supervising research projects. Currently IIT is conducting its new scientific plan (2018-2023) developing four strategic research domains: Robotics, Nanomaterials, Technologies for Life Science, and Computational Sciences. The main goal is to produce technologies that will have a positive impact on some important societal challenges, such as sustainability and the environment, healthcare and aging society, also reflecting the priorities of EU framework programs. This approach promotes the creation of joint-labs and research agreements with industrial partners, universities, and international research centers.
Role in the ETAPAS project
IITparticipates in ETAPAS through the iCub Tech Facility and the Humanoid Sensing and Perception group, which have strong expertise in the development of humanoid robotic platforms and research in the fields of artificial perception and machine learning. IIT will contribute to WP4 and in particular will lead development of use case 2 "Robot-mediated rehabilitation".
The Lisbon Council For Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal Asbl (LC)
he Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal is a think tank and policy network established in 2003 in Belgium as a non-profit, non-partisan association dedicated to making a positive contribution through cutting-edge research and by engaging political leaders, and the public at large, in a constructive exchange about the current economic and social challenges. The organisation positioned itself as a “go-to-place” for unconventional, out-of-thebox thinking and research, attracting senior leaders from its very early days. The core expertise of the Lisbon Council concerns digital transformation of public administration, technology road mapping, impact assessment and evaluation, and engagement of policy maker.
Role in the ETAPAS project
In the project, the Lisbon Council will be leading the WP6 “DT Governance model definition”. Further, the Lisbon Council will be responsible for the socio-economic assessment of the risks of the DT-based applications, the exploitation strategy, and the validation of the measurement system engaging stakeholders.
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown to become one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation. It is the Sweden’s largest technical research and learning institution and home to students, researchers and faculty from around the world. Their research and education cover a wide area including natural sciences and all branches of engineering, as well as architecture, industrial management, urban planning, history and philosophy. In particular, the KTH division of philosophy conducts research, education, and PhD education within many branches of philosophy, particularly philosophy that is connected to technology and its use in society. Its research areas include philosophy and ethics of technology, decision theory, philosophy of risk, logic, and philosophy of science with a particular emphasis on the science-policy interface.
Role in the ETAPAS project
In the project, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Karolinska Institutet will co-operate closely on all ethical issues. Specifically, KTH will oversee the ethical monitoring and assessment of the DTs deployment in the Public Administrations; in particular by leading the WP2 ”Responsible DT adoption: ethical principles and legal framework definition” and, after an analysis of the context, by defining a Code of Conduct to summarise the ethical demands on DTs in PA. Furthermore, KTH will contribute in the indicators and metric definition, in the RDT validation and in the governance model definition.
Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)
CEA is a R&D governmental agency whose field of expertise applies to energy, health, transport, security, defense, and ICT. Since its creation in 1945, it has successfully responded to major societal and scientific challenges, like the French nuclear power generation program, nuclear deterrence, micro and nanotechnologies, astrophysics, medical imaging, toxicology and biotechnologies. CEA represents: 9 research centers, 16010 employees, 4.1 billion Euros budget, 743 priority patents filed in 2016, more than 600 industrial partners, 83 new companies created since 1984 in high technologies sectors. In HORIZON 2020, CEA is involved in more than 600 projects. CEA is listed among the Top-3 of European Research Centers with strongest participation in H2020. Within CEA, CEA LIST (“Laboratoire d'Intégration de Systèmes et des technologies”) department is part of CEA TECH, the CEA Technological Research Division. CEA LIST is a research institute of 750 people situated in Ile-de-France (Paris region) specialized in smart digital systems, which combines basic and industrial researches, developments and innovations. CEA LIST is leading together with Systematic Paris-Region industrial cluster the DIH DIGIHALL, providing a service offer of collaborative R&D to the industrial tissue of over 900 companies in the Ile-de-France region to help them achieve the digital transformation.
Role in the ETAPAS project
Two teams from CEA LIST are involved in ETAPAS, one working on privacy protection and NLP related tasks and the other team leading use case analyses and resuming the lessons learnt in order to ensure further effective DT use in public administrations. More specifically, CEA will lead WP4, ensuring the use case coordination, and will contribute in the MEF use case. Moreover, CEA will resume the lessons learnt from use case analysis in WP6. It will also be actively involved in communication and dissemination of project results within regional, national and European networks.
Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi Onlus (FDG)
Fondazione Don Gnocchi (FDG) is the largest private not for profit Organisation in the field of rehabilitation in Italy. With more than 60 years of experience and twenty-eight centres in Italy, FDG has a leadership role in rehabilitation, assistance and clinical research activities at national and European level. The target clinical population, with an overall number of 3 million patient access per year, is mainly made of people with any kind of disability, especially on the neurological and neuromotor side, from childhood to elderly. FDG also provides services for Integrated Home Care and Assistance to those people unable to benefit from the standard outpatient services offered by the Institute. FDG employs more than 5000 persons including researchers, medical, paramedical, technical and administrative personnel. Two Centres of FDG (in Milan and Florence) are acknowledged as IRCCS (Clinical Research Institutes) by the Italian Ministry of Health.
Role in the ETAPAS project
FDG will be involved in the robotics use case led by IIT. In particular, FDG main roles in the project will be to deploy the robotic solution developed by IIT in one of its centers, to define a testing protocol, and to run the testing phase through the involvement of a group of patients and clinicians, in order to provide all the data needed for evaluating the social impact of such disruptive technology. FDG, having been involved in several projects aimed at the clinical validation as well as the assessment of acceptability and usability of rehab and assistive technologies, has all the expertise needed to plan and run the testing phase.
Municipality of Katerini (MUKA)
The Municipality of Katerini (MUKA) is a Local Public Authority of 1st Degree (according to Greek national law). The MUKA has more than 88,000 inhabitants and more than 250,000 people visit the Municipality in annual bases mostly in the beautiful seacoast. The MUKA has special units/municipal enterprises that support social projects, these are the Organization of Education, Culture, Sports and Social Provision and the Municipal Enterprise of Public Benefit. Abiding to the national strategy for public services transformation, the MUKA has been implementing over the last ten years a Local Sustainable Development Strategy, which includes the development of certain actions towards its transformation to a smart municipality. Furthermore, th municipality has extensive experience in the management and participation in EU funded projects in Europe for Citizens, Interreg, Life, FEAD and Horizon 2020 Programmes and has played an important role, both as leader and as partner, in European projects.
Role in the ETAPAS project
The municipality of Katerini will provide the infrastructure for the implementation of use case 4 about the Multi-factor Misinformation Handling of Public organizations. The proposed platform will be applied on a specific scenario aiming at improving migration reporting & restrict criminality & violence in the municipality of Katerini. Relevant data from social media will be aggregated and analyzed in order to process and evaluate the living conditions of immigrants, sense the local’s acceptance and form privacy preserving groups of opinions and views. The analysis of the municipality dataset will be the basis for emerging violence detection in order to indicate pro-active methods to mitigate this phenomenon with appropriate social actions.
University of Graz (UNIGRAZ)
The University of Graz (UNIGRAZ) is an Austrian university under federal public law founded 1585. It is one of the largest institutions of higher education in Austria (32.000 students/4.100 employees). The university is organized in six faculties (Theology; Law; Business, Economic and Social Sciences; Environmental, Regional and Educational Sciences; Humanities; Natural Sciences). UNIGRAZ will contribute with its Institute of Tax and Fiscal Law. In addition, the Field of Excellence “Smart Regulation”, which is composed of experts from different disciplines will be involved in the aproject.
Role in the ETAPAS project
UNIGRAZ will focus on the legal aspects of disruptive technologies in public services. In particular, it will focus on transversal ethical, legal and social questions and on the legal assessment of the use-cases. UNIGRAZ has a vast experience in research about aspects of blockchain, Big Data Analysis, AI, gamification and other technologies and their impact on public governance and government. These aspects include fundamental rights, other legal aspects of compliance and beyond compliance, as well as ethical, legal, social aspects of trustworthiness.
Karolinska Institutet (KI)
Karolinska Institutet is one of the world’s foremost medical universities. Its vision is to advance knowledge about life and strive towards better health for all. As a university, KI is Sweden’s single largest centre of medical academic research and offers the country’s widest range of medical courses and programmes. Since 1901 the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine. With our close relationship to the clinical milieu of Karolinska University Hospital, a well established infrastructure and a stable financial situation, Karolinska Institutet has excellent prerequisites for sustaining high quality research and development. The close proximity of the Karolinska University Hospital and other teaching hospitals in the Stockholm area thus plays an important role in our education.
Role in the ETAPAS project
KI will be involved in ETAPAS through the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics (LIME) and in particular the ethics group, from which Professor Sven Ove Hansson will be the project scientific coordinator. Within the project, KI will closely cooperate with KTH. In particular Karolinska Institutet will take the main.