On Tuesday, June 14th 2022, the official kick-off of the GovStart Programme 2022 took place. To bring the GovTech scene together, PUBLIC has already organised two cohorts in Germany. This year, start-ups from areas such as smart city, artificial intelligence, civic tech, administration and digital identity are taking part in the programme, which aims to unite GovTechs to drive innovation in administration. Make.org Germany is one of the companies selected to participate from a large pool of applicants.
Programme participants are connected thanks to a community and engagement platform and supported through various events and tools to scale in the public sector. T-Systems International as well as Google Cloud are also involved in GovStart as sponsors and strategic partners.
With its innovative platform for massive citizen participation, Make.org, representing the civic tech sector, is one of the 13 start-ups selected (out of 43 qualified applications) to participate in the 6-month programme. For Make.org, it is a great opportunity to further "gain a foothold" in Germany and to be integrated into the structures and ecosystems of the administrations. This way, we can get a lot closer to our goal: to massively and sustainably involve citizens at international, federal, state and city level in a positive change of society.
On Tuesday, June 14th 2022, Sarah Delahaye, Director of Make.org Germany, and Claudia Ardelean, Senior Project Manager, were on campus to participate the first live event at the GovTech Campus in Berlin: "Kickoff: The GovTech Ecosystem". The event was moderated by Nils Hoffmann, Managing Director of PUBLIC Germany, and Faruk Tuncer, the Co-Founder and CEO of Polyteia. Above all, opportunities and challenges for start-ups in the public sector and the topic of innovation in administration were major focal points of the event.
Last May, Sarah Delahaye, along with Alicia Combaz, General Director of Make.org, and Guillemette Colombe, Director of Consultations, were already able to meet and speak personally with Lars Zimmermann, the executive director of the campus.
Sarah Delahaye, Director at Make.org Germany: "Our team is very excited to be part of this comprehensive programme. It is a huge opportunity for Make.org to accelerate our development in Germany and learn a lot from Public, the partners and the cohort. Through this, we hope to anchor citizen participation as a central component of innovative public administration in Germany for decades to come. Nowadays, it is more important than ever to involve citizens in all their diversity and in large numbers in the transformation of our society at all levels (federal, state, city). This is the only way we can sustainably overcome the current crises and strengthen democracy in Germany and Europe."