Monday 2nd & Tuesday 3rd October 2017
Winnipeg, Canada
at the Fairmont Winnipeg Hotel

The Global Forum/Shaping the Future is an internationally recognized think-tank for exchange and networking among governments at national, regional & local levels, private & public organizations, research & development experts.

The Global Forum is an independent, high profile, international, non-for-profit event dedicated to business and policy issues affecting the successful evolution of the Digital Society. The Global Forum brings each year in a different city around the world more than 300 key policy-makers and public/private stakeholders from more than 30 countries from all continents, it is often considered as the Davos for ICT.

Dr. Alan Shark from the Public Technology Institute opened this session by thanking participants for being dedicated to this new topic featured at the 2015 GF. Intelligent Infrastructures – like other new topics – started as discussion points during previous years’ sessions during which thought leaders were “weaving or building a quilt through a dialogue focusing on vast topics under the theme of intelligent infrastructure”.

Shark then presented his view on intelligent infrastructures and Internet of everything.  According to him, increasingly everything will be connected to everything. Predictions are that in 2020, there will be 50 billion smart objects. With this convergence of people, things, processes and data, public leaders should all know that this technology is here to stay imposing real concerns regarding the security in systems which may require a data governance i.e. regulation of data ownership, control and sharing. Governments must establish policies to address these challenges.

Timo Ali-Vehmas, Head of Ecosystems Research, Nokia Technologies, Finland presented on the nature and structure of the future intelligent infrastructure which includes four clusters of ICT: content, network, consumer devices, and the actual consumer with issues of identity, data and services provided. 4G to 5G will be a significant change to the ecosystem. As such, the digitization and software for this ‘conversion’ drive full integration, overcoming segmentation of these interrelated ecosystems with data being the key driver for the changes. As society converges to 5G, there are other network effects of openness that need to considered, such as: consumer choice, interoperability and competition. The transition from 3G to 4G and then to 5G has a history repeating itself, only the transition to 5G will be so vast, that ‘history will repeat itself, but in unpredictable ways’.

Basuki Yusuf Iskandar, Head of Agency for ICT R&D and Human Resources Development, Ministry of ICT,  presented  national  strategy development for 5G. In his  presentation, Mr. Basuki discussed  the  challenges  of  adopting  5G. In technology, there are limited human resources and budget for R&D and additional  cost of social learning in adopting new 5G technology. In infrastructure, the switching cost is high due to unused of most existing infrastructure and limited fiber optic backbone. Challenges in regulation and social challenges are also mentioned. More frequent discussions about the 5G plan are taking place in Indonesia, and the Government of Indonesia is planning to strengthen local industrial players. According to Mr. Basuki, adoption of 5G will be initiated in Indonesia if switching cost can be covered by the future benefits based on rational economic adjustment.

Latin Ladid, Founder& President, IPv6 Forum, Chair, 5G World Alliance, Luxembourg, talked about IPv6 in the 5G era. He argued that 4G systems still remains significant in a 5G world because of its low cost markets and legacy infrastructure. He mentioned some key factor needed to be considered for 5G Network Evolution to meet expectations.

Juha Palve, VP Customer Solutions, Knowledge Intensive Products and Services, VTT Tech Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Finland, talked about intelligent infrastructure which means innovation from silicon to cloud. The enablers of intelligent infrastructure are:

• Data science
• Future communications
• Sensing and measurement

Then Mr. Palve spoke of 5G challenges: handling the capacity need of the radio systems without major increase in energy consumption; ensuring needed HW performance；verifying and improving SW performance; and information security. He discussed also the key 5G system requirements. In the end, he said that as researchers, his team at VTT is already thinking of 6G and beyond.

Claudia Selli, Director European Government Affaird, AT&T Belgium discussed the pace of innovation and our ability to adapt.  In the last 70 years, the pace of innovation was slow and incremental. In the last 10 years, innovative change has been revolutionary  With the advent of smart phones and expanded  networks, data usage has also increased exponentially. The last 8 years has been a 100,000 % increase of data flow.  and in the last 6 years, AT&T has invested $126B to upgrade the network in increased capability & use of streaming.

The Pope Francis visit last week to Washington, DC, Philadelphia and New York; there was an increase in selfies and videos being posted — and AT&T’s increased capability helped provide that service. We are now ubiquitously connected – through devices primarily.  To address this pace of innovation & 5G networks, government needs to become involved and work with Industry to provide a strategic framework to harmonize spectrums and standardize guidance so that we are able to respond to this rapid pace of innovation.

This truly interactive and engaging opening session brought together:

• Anna Gomez, Partner and Attorney at Law, Wiley Rein LLP, USA – the moderator of the session;
• Mikko Kosonen, President, SITRA-Finnish Innovation Fund, Finland;
  • Yoshio Tanaka, Professor, Tokyo University of Science (TUS), Graduate School of Innovation Studies,Japan;
  • Jørgen Abild Andersen, Director General Telecom (RTD), Chairman of OECD’s Committee on Digital    Economy Policy (CDEP);
  • Adriane LaPointe, Senior Policy Advisor in the State Department Office of Communication and information Policy, US Department of State, USA;
  • Luis Jorge Romero, Director General ETSI-European /telecommunications Standards Institute;
  • Anja Wyden Guelpa, State Chancellor, State of Geneva, Switzerland.

Ms. Gomez opened the session by bringing to everyone’s attention that 57% population does not have access to internet. On the other hand, this year’s Global Forum is taking place in the city with the first testing lab for 5G which is estimated to bring about 65 billion dollar revenue by year 2025. With such a development, infrastructure, security and privacy become the main focus points for the future.

Mr. Andersen started his talk with the viewpoint that focusing only on full mobile broadband coverage is a narrow approach towards the forthcoming boom of high-speed Internet connectivity, and that our approach should address three major challenges faced today: poor innovation, low growth and unemployment. He stressed that the problem towards this boom should be dealt with by reliance on the following four pillars:

• E-infrastructure: Full broadband coverage and open internet to everyone.
• E-Applications: Provide services to fill the high speed internet pipes.
• E-Security: Ensuring privacy and trust that are vital for the system to be successful.
• E-Skills and e-literacy: People should be made digitally skilled and literate to fill the gap for the digitally industry.

According to Mr. Andersen digital economy is the solution to future economy and employment.

Mikko Kosonen is the president of the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) since 2008. He discussed the importance of increasing the wellbeing while disconnecting the economic growth from the consumption of natural resources, and transitioning from top-down massive production of goods to bottom-up production of services.

He further discussed healthcare and ICT, and Finland’s potential to build a leading market for ICT-enabled preventive healthcare. The new framework of the preventive healthcare system will be enabled by the following conditions:

• Transparent steering
• Single channel funding
• Separating service ownership from service production

Mr. Kosonen also talked about the new economic paradigm –the circular economy – characterized by:

• A new business model which generates no waste or loss, and reduces the dependency of virgin natural resources;
• Products, materials and their value which remain in circulation instead of linear usage;
• Added value for products generated through digitization and services
• Consumer-based models creating added value for consumers instead of ownership

Realizing these opportunities requires:

• A new type of collaboration acknowledging that global competition increasingly takes place on ecosystem, not on individual company level.
• A new business ecosystem developed based on setting national priorities for new growth areas; multi-disciplinary research combined with active participation, and intensive public-private-people partnership
• New incentives (taxation, regulation etc.) and innovation-driven public procurement to make this happen.

Mr. Kosonen stressed the need for more innovation from the private sector in conjunction with the government, as well as the need for the public and private sector taking up a leading role in implementing more effective digitalization strategies in various industries to enable higher added value in production and service offering.

Anja Wyden Guelpa was the first woman to be elected the chancellor of state in Geneva 2009 and re-elected in 2013 for the second term and currently presides over the College des Secretaire Generaux of the seven states departments of Geneva and is board member of Swiss Tourism and of the RTSR regional council.

Ms. Guelpa focused on the importance of open data and open source – the new imperatives to be considered and implemented in the new digital economy as they enable greater transparency and accountability in the public sector, increased government legitimacy and co-creation of public goods. She illustrated these core building blocks using the example of Switzerland’s electronic voting system – CHVote in which the e-voting ballot was made transparent just like the traditional voting ballot boxes by making the source code publically available for future improvements. Few aspects of CHVote are worth being noted: internally developed system; public ownership of the e-voting system and public access to the code to test it and improve it. Yet, as Ms. Guelpa stressed, not everything is open and transparent. Some “good secrets” remain safe in the Switzerland’s e-voting system and that is the secrecy of each individual’s vote which should never be in jeopardy.

Jorgen Abild Anderson, Chairman Committee on Digital Economy Policy, OECD, discussed the main elements of today’s digital strategy and the main challenges we are still facing (poor innovation low growth and high unemployment). Mr. Anderson stressed the four pillars of the digital economy:

• E-infrastructure
• Openness of data
• E-security and e-privacy
• E-skills and e-literacy

Challenges that need to be overcome to achieve a flourishing digital economy:

• Building a full comprehensive system that encompasses the four pillars
• Re-establishing trust
• Filling in the gap in skills and qualifications
• Government’s unawareness of what needs to be done within its departments and across its department to establish a fully-functioning digital economy
• Strong coordination across different sectors

Adriane LaPointe, the Senior Policy Advisor in the State Department Office of Communications and Information Policy, US Department of State, talked about extending the benefits from the Internet and digitization to those who still don’t have access to Internet. The Internet can be a driver of a growth if it is available, accessible and affordable, and no country should be left out of the Internet Age. The real challenge nowadays is how to develop a coherent, holistic government approach about the Internet of Things.

The first session of the Global Forum 2015 was introduced by the Chair Mr. Kari Terho. Terho pointed out that even if the discussion around the Internet of Things (IoT) is all about connectivity, the connectivity isn’t the issue at all, anyway not in the small country like Finland, but there are other things that are even more important. Terho talked about machine to machine (M-M) connectivity. The problem and the key issue is actually how to use real time data in decision making, thus combining the data from machines and utilize it.

Terho continued that a big difference can be made to the consumers with the IoT if the companies understand that the things aren’t the thing but in the end it’s all about the applications. In order to gain benefit from the IoT, companies have to be brave and start testing and piloting their ideas, because these things are still new for everyone.

The moderator, Jean-Pierre Chamoux opened the floor for discussions. The first speaker was Mr. Harri Kopola from VTT technical research centre of Finland, who talked about the real world IoT solutions from sensor to cloud. He explained that we need to build solutions and applications to ensure connectivity. One practical example was the Singaporean harbor built by VTT, which enables the machines to cooperate in a connected way and help the people working in the harbor.

Mr. Gerald Santucci, Head of Unit Knowledge Sharing, European Commission, continued by talking about the great potential of the IoT. “The IoT isn’t just another technology hype, but it is dynamic and here to stay.” Mr. Santucci presented that the IoT will expand with yearly rates over 20% in value between 2013 and 2020. Combined, the IoT, Cloud and Big Data can offer new business opportunities for companies. Mr. Santucci ended the presentation with a relevant open question for everyone to think about “Where will the value come from in the future?” (The video of the interview of Gerald Santucci reveals his own idea what the answer is!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiTJvN7nEkE)

Mr. Samuel Laurinkari, Senior Manager, EU Government Relations in eBay, said that there are many barriers that make it hard to sell things to other people, such as legal barriers, customs, product rules, manufactures, limiting the retail and technical measures. eBay has its own philosophy to the IoT, which is all about eliminating the unnecessary barriers that people may have when selling things to each other.

Mr. Keiichiro Seki, Head of Research, Center for Strategic Management & Innovation from Nomura Research Institute continued that digitalization may need structural changes within companies. He also pointed out that there may easily be misunderstandings when talking about the IoT, because people understand it differently.

Mr. Denis Gardin, Senior Vice President in Airbus Group Corporate, started by discussing about big data analytics and using it to improve efficiency, savings and quality over the lifecycle of an aircraft development and employment. He also presented issues that Airbus Group finds challenging. One of the biggest challenges he mentioned was to train individuals to acquire new competences within the company, generate value and drive the new business model.

Antti Aumo, Executive Vice President in Finpro focused on the Smart traffic opportunities in Finland – an application that can really benefit everyone’s daily life. One of the global trends is the digitalization of people moving around regularly, which means all the related technology has to be reliable. Besides, this application needs to provide the fastest solution which explores hybrid service models, trains, buses, subs, taxis etc. working together do meet the needs of the user, and saving them time to move around by combined use of multiple transportation vehicles.

After that, Mr. Shoumen Datta, Research Affiliate MIT, in SVP IIC, illustrated the achievements of his research group up by now by playing a video on the usage of IoT.

Mr. Alberto Di Felice, Government Affairs Senior Analyst in Qualcomm Europe, thinks we need to create new standard in securing users’ privacy because of technology developed. The scary reality is that now we are able to know of every action of users just by silently accessing their Smartphones or Smart infrastructure and storing the data in our database. The use of this data needs to be highly regulated with proper administrator authorities.

Ms. Mariane Cimino, Consultant in Génétique, focused on the implementation of IoT in the dairy cattle breeding or the so called animal husbandry.  A survey-based research in this area revealed that 67% of farmers have at least one connected tool and 38% of the unequipped breeders envisage equipping themselves in the short term. These numbers show that the spread of electricity equipment in breeding field is not the problem for the appliance of IoT because the  farmers don’t refuse to use high-tech equipment in their daily working.

Bror Salmeilin, Adviser, Innovation Systems, European Commision presents “Challenges for innovation; how to respond in systemic way”

At first, he introduced the essential drivers of innovation:

• connectivity
• openness
• interaction
• “organic”

Regarding creating innovation platforms, Bror quoted Prof V. Ramaswami, “Assemblages of persons, interfaces, processes, and artifacts, purposefully designed to intensify engagements to co-create value.” He continued with discussing the discovery of valuable ideas by crowds, and talked about the paradigm change from closed innovation through open innovation to Open innovation 2.0.

Stephane Grumbach, Research Director of INRIA, talked about the role of intermediation in innovation which offer new platforms and eco-systems for innovation and enable easy move from the supply side to the demand side of markets of new, innovative solutions. He also talked about the disruptive role of these information intermediaries.

Audrey Scozzaro Ferrazzini from Qualcomm talked about patents as incentives for inventors to take risks and effective tools to drive innovation, growth and employment.

Michael Stankosky, Research Professor, from George Washington University, USA talked about competitive collaboration, the new paradigm that is critical to innovation. In a traditional way, many companies innovate by themselves, and protect their innovations with patents. However, innovation is not only very expensive, but also too long for any realized tangible benefits. A new model has been seen that we call: competitive or business collaboration. Instead of going it alone, several companies are now teaming with their competitors to research on significant issues for their respective industries. One example of this are automobile companies. Where it is too expensive and risky to do research on the next evolution of the gasoline and electric engine, they are now collaborating with all their resources (people, know-how, money) [BMW & Toyota are sharing costs and knowledge for electric battery research]. The results will be shared, and their competitive advantage will remain in how they integrate the engine with all the other aspects of the car: design, safety, features, marketing, price, maintenance, etc., as well as their brand name. There are many other examples, to name a few: Coca-Cola + Heinz [collaborating to develop more sustainable containers], Philips [collaborating on multiple fronts], GMV + Lavina [using cross-sector know-how to advance neurological rehabilitation], and Reebok + Marvel [where athletes meet superheroes]. The old mantra: innovate or die; the new one: collaborate or die.

As a professor, he suggested to be innovative by daring to be curious, break the rules, challenge authority, and bringing change to the next level.

Evgeny Obrazstov showcased the use of innovative technologies in nuclear modelling in designing in Atomproekt.

Francois Stephan from IRT SystemX, talked about new innovation strategies for smart territories – digitization of territories which can be as small as a single city and as large as a whole continent – to achieve sustainability and security. One of the key issues to be addressed with this strategy include:

• How to guarantee confidence and security of data management?
• How to model and stimulate smart territories with all scales integrated?
• How to design sustainable architectures for territories development?

The key enablers of innovations for smart territories include: speed, interdisciplinarity, cross-sectoral collaboration, co-location work, continuum from upfront research to field testing, large communities working with startups, public-private partnership, joint research by academy and industry etc.

Jemery Millard, Chief Policy Adviser, Danish Technological Institute, Denmark, shared his insights in achieving greater societal impact through open, social and inclusive innovation. He further defined each kind of innovation:

• Social innovation is meeting a social need in meeting a social need in new ways which also collaborates with, and empowers, the beneficiary, rather than just doing something to them. He used “In Our Back Yard” from USA as an example of social innovation.
• Inclusive innovation – reaching the poorest and most excluded (Prahalad’s BoP) using the example of “Mission Leben” from Germany using ICT to adapt traditional work places to needs and capacities of individual workers offering easy interfaces.
• Frugal Innovation illustrated by the example of “Narayana Cardiac Care” from India which significantly dropped the cost of a cardiac surgery to just $3,000 and decreased the rate of mortality to just 2%

The underlying aspects of these types of innovation are:

• Continuous asset squeezing (more effective use of assets) and
• Moving from linear economy to circular economy which is characterized by shift from mass consumption/ production to mass customization; from Porter’s shareholders’ value to shared value and from abundant to constrained investment capital and resources, and new business models marking the shift from ownership and exclusive use to new forms of shared and collaborative consumption and increased importance of access over ownership.

Alberto Steindler: CEO of Insiel Mercato, Paolo Barichello: CIO Azienda ULSS N. 8 di Asolo, Italy, Giampaolo Armelli: Head of Research Unit GPI Group, Italy, Giorgio Calzetti & Alessandro Borgato: CEO Sales Manager, Solinfo, Italy, Serena La Manna: Project  Manager R&D Division DEDALUS SpA, Italy, Michèle Thonnet: Official Representative of the French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in the Europian & International e-Health Domain, France, Sara Zanchiello: Technology Transfer Broker, AREA Science Park, Italy

With the world becoming more connected with the use of wireless networks, there is a desire to bring healthcare into this world.  Already many doctors’ offices have made patients records electronic and have eliminated a portion of human error from the process of maintaining these records.  With these improvements we are moving towards a more tech savvy healthcare system.  Alberto Steindler proposes a system where the patient never has to leave their home to seek treatment.  Those chronically ill can speak directly to their health care providers through video conferencing instead of risking their health further by going to the doctor in person.  He demonstrated an intricate wireless system of the simple doctor’s office visit from patient’s records to receiving medications.

Continuing on the road of eHealthcare, Barichello presents a test project which will allow for citizens to have secure access to their personal healthcare records.  This in turn will allow the public to update their personal healthcare records.  They will be able to make outstanding and current payments to their health plans. Patients can also check themselves in for appointments prior to their arrival at the office.  This will allow for less wait time between appointments and more efficient record keeping on the part of the healthcare professionals.

With this new technology, doctor’s offices, pharmacies and patients will have easier access to records and will be able to have more accurate results.  Hopefully this process will also eliminate human error which occurs much more frequently with the use of paper records.

Joze Gricar (Chair Department of Informatics, University of Maribor, Slovenia) introduced the session “Collaboration in Danube” talking about the Danube river, not as a boundary but as a connecting river. He explained that the Danubian region is a geographic region composed by the countries in which the river passes. He pointed out the importance of eCollaboration (collaboration in technology) as a relevant topic for the Global Forum.

Christian Kittl (Managing director, Evolaris Next Level, Graz, Austria & Mobile Living Lab & Steering Committee, ALADIN – ALpe Adria Danube Universities Initiative, Austria) then took the word talking about the ALADIN network project, that represents the linking between 19 universities and LivingLab. The goal of the project is to help nations in the Danube macroregion improving their innovation level by creating a flow of knowledge among the institutes. The action plan of the European Union strategy for the Danube region is to apply a methodology called Digital Business Ecosystem Model, that will help sharing technological knowledge between the region. He finally mentioned the Danube Business Forum, a place where new ideas can be shared and discussed.

Maurizio Fermeglia (Rector University of Trieste, Italy) analized the topic from the high education point of view. He highlighted the fact that italian universities form students focusing on single faculty, while the world needs experts in interdisciplinary fields. Then he talked about the Horizon2020, an European project, and specifically about investments on forming leadership in enabling industrial technologies. Therefore he concentrated the second part of his presentation on nanotechnology, a science where a lot of money will be invested into. According to Fermeglia’s opinion, money invested in research product results and not directly other money. From results comes innovation and only then new money come. He also stated that innovation is a discontinuity in knowledge, because people have to change their mind to reach a new innovation level. Finally he said that the question is not what the Danube region can do for Trieste, but what Trieste can do for the Danube region.

Jani Recer (Assistant Director for Informatics University Medical Center Ljubljana, Slovenia) talked about eHealth collaboration in the Danube region. He spook about initiatives in healthcare pursued by the European Union. In the Digital Agenda for Europe directives on the application of patients’ rights in crossborder healthcare are present. He said that we need to make eHealth tools more effective, user friendly and least but not last acceptable by patients.  He then provided prototypes of working systems that enhance collaboration among hospitals to face common problems like the drug event reporting.

Tomaž Breznik (Presales Specialist, SAP d.o.o., Ljubljana) exposed the SAP solution to improve the tourism sector, called Tourism Insight. Tourism has a lot of potential, as a consequence there is a need for optimize tourist pricing and offering. Institutions get a lot of data on tourism but doesn’t know how to manage and gain profit from it. The SAP prototype help regions improving their tourist offering. Then exposed the impact of the solution provided by his company by showing reports on the trend of that sector, focusing on the possibilities for the Danibian region.

Edi Kraus (Deputy to the Economy Development, city of Trieste) brought his real life case of collaboration between people from the Danubian region. He talked about his company that produces nylon. The company started in Trentino Alto Adige (an Italian region) and after few years opened a plant in Slovenia. Then the Slovenian division opened another factory in Croatia and from there it spread around the world (the last plant opened is in China). People in the company understood that internalization is a richness and not a risk, so the built an international mentality. It is a clear example of how people from the Danube region where able to gain success thanks to their collaboration.

Hugo Kerschot (Founder & CEO Is-Practice, Belgium), moderator of the talk, started the session at 2.45 pm introducing one of the main topics – the concept of a Smart City.

Troy Nachtigall (ISIA Firenze, Italy) pointed out the central role of designers according to creation of ideas and new tendencies. In the example of a bike-sharing project the city is seen as a platform, full of services accessible to people, and citizens are compared to users of a community.

The story of Taichung city, brought to us by Ching-Chih Liao (Deputy Secretary-General Taichung City Government, Taiwan), represents a perfect example of Smart City, with its free Wi-Fi coverage and fiber broadband availability. The Government  made abandoned areas more attractive (for example, by creating vertical gardens upon the buildings, organizing various events and festivals).

Government is not the only actor participating to the changes of a city. Citizens’ role is fundamental, too. Citizens are able to join government activities through ICT, creating forms of e-Democracy and e-Participation. This is what emerges from the talk of Eikazu Niwano (Producer Research and Development Planning Department, NTT Corporation, Japan). Self-Government activities became to raise their importance, for example in a case of disaster recovery. The offer of an ICT environment helps regional entities to administer themselves and gain autonomy. This will improve the sustainability of the Smart City.

Kenji Hiroshige (Director London Representative Office, FMMC-Foundation for Multimedia Communication, Japan) presented a platform taking care of citizens – the Integrated Public Alert  Platform. From this example it is easy to see how ICT can improve public services, representing an efficient method for communication in case of an emergency. Local and central governments are providers that collect information (such as flood warnings, evacuation centers, etc.) in a centralized way and share them with local residents through several media channels. Citizens can access accurate information independently from where they are.

Hanne Melin (Policy Strategy Counsel, eBay Inc. Public Policy Lab EMEA, Belgium) showed the cycle of policy innovation and the role of Big Data into her company.

Another company also trying to build interfaces for Big Open Data is Navidis, represented by Philippe Perennez (CEO and R&D, Navidis, France), that brought the “Smart City +” platform as an example of aggregation of apps and services. Sharing needs and availability, using real-time and interactive applications with Open Big Data, helps forge stronger relations between people. This can reinvent the way we live together.

Fabio Perossini (Managing Director Kpeople ltd, UK) focused on the CROSS (Citizen Reinforcing Open Smart Synergies) – a European project aimed at supporting collaboration of citizens in the domain of innovation.  This project is based only on help and offers from volunteers and there is an unofficial sector of community services being provided without any funding. In this scenario it is mandatory to have good communication.

Alan Shark (Executive Director PTI – Public Technologies Institute; Associate professor of Practice Rutgers University School of public affairs and Administration, USA) turned the focus on the key role taken by Big Data (“data is like rain, they are everywhere. Don’t miss the power of data.”). In New York, for example, there is a spread of Open Data websites and apps. Innovation, considered not as creating something new from scratch but more likely doing things in a different way, has fundamental role, too.

Julia Glidden (Managing Director 21C Consultancy, UK) considered the city as an Innovation Platform where we’re all data collectors and geolocated data has a central function. Data should be open and accessible (release of Open Data) and it should be simpler to use them.

In conclusion, there was a little debate about the cooperation between private and public sector. The main question was: “After spending lot of money for gathering these data, why allow other people to access them and, possibly, making money from them?” The answer should be that there is a price to be paid for giving customers this data, but the potential is worthy.

Madeline Siösteen Thiel, the session moderator, reminded the attendees of the success of last year’s Global Forum which was held in Stockholm and then introduced the other speakers.

Gabrielle Gauthey talked about the international trends for new investment model in NGA. Showing some statistics about the growth of the broadband and mobile connections and public WiFi spots, she explained that the world had changed and Internet had in fact become the portal of our lives, and all the contents are moving to the cloud. Mobile traffic is growing due to smartphone spreading and “Internet of Things”. She also talked about the decoupling between traffic and revenues in mobile networks. Europe needs new investment models for network deployment and needs to find them elsewhere, for example in Mexico, where a new model based on a common infrastructure is being tested.

Lorenzo Montermini, IT Manager GPI Group, introduced us to the new challenges of Public Healthcare. He said that there must be a redefinition of public sector role. Healthcare should not be a hospital and doctors exclusively, but its center should become the patient itself thanks to the implementation of self-service systems.

Michel Catinat (Head of Unit for Key Enabling Technologies and ICT, DG ENTERPRISE European Commission) pointed out the necessity of a European certification scheme for digital skills making a mark of the importance of certification systems. In the end, he stressed the importance of training packages co-designed with ICT industry.