Identifying emerging ICTs and their innovation potential for the Public Sector: the SONNETS Innovation Identification Framework

The SONNETS Innovation Identification Framework is an innovative methodological framework that will accelerate the transformation of the public sector into an innovation breeding carrier. The goal of the SONNETS Framework is twofold and lies in supporting innovation both in the public sector and through the public sector.

Innovation in the public sector may have an internal or external focus, pertaining to the improvement of the public sector internal processes and the former’s efficiency, and the development of improved services for citizens and businesses respectively, and targets the public sector’s modernization. On the other side, innovation through the public sector focuses on promoting the generation and implementation of innovative ideas and the corresponding creation of value in other sectors and pursues accordingly the transformation of the public sector into an innovation driver. The Framework emphasizes the necessity to have an informed view of the current societal trends and challenges as a prerequisite for better accommodating the respective needs, as well as the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a key enabler for innovation, and pursues its goal by means of coupling findings on emerging ICTs and trends with insights on current societal challenges and needs. Such coupling is carried out on the basis of specifying and bringing into the foreground specific innovative solutions for the adoption of the identified technologies and the confrontation of the identified needs respectively. In this respect, the SONNETS Innovation Identification Framework, and more specifically the innovation solutions specified are considered as the means to bridge the identified needs with technologies. The Framework does not limit though its scope in the specification of relevant innovation solutions. It further addresses the assessment and evaluation of their actual innovation potential. The latter is considered under the prism of both the impact and feasibility of the identified solutions. To this end, the Framework defines a set of impact assessment criteria and feasibility assessment criteria, in order to evaluate the innovation potential of the solutions under consideration for the public sector. The former are used to evaluate the magnitude of the potential effects of the identified solutions, whereas the latter are employed to assess the research needs, which the technological, socio-economic and ethical implications of these solutions translate into. The rating of the specified solutions against both the dimensions of impact and feasibility allows to distinguish and, possibly prioritize, those solutions that hold greater value for the public sector, and lays the foundations for designing a concrete time plan of actions and a set of recommendations for their implementation in practice.

From a methodological point of view, the SONNETS Framework relies basically on the methods of desk-based research, interviews, focus groups and workshops, and open consultations, and encompasses six logical steps or phases as follows: i) the identification of societal needs, societal and public sector trends/challenges (Needs Identification) ii) the identification of emerging technologies and trends that make a difference today in other sectors (Technology Identification) iii) the selection of a subset of these technologies and trends, and the analysis of the latter in terms of their key characteristics and specificities (Technology Selection and Analysis) iv) the assessment of these technologies in the domains originally met and their correlation to the public sector needs and societal challenges on the basis of existing services and applications, as well as new innovation solutions that may benefit from these technologies (Technology Assessment) v) the evaluation of these services’ and solutions’ innovation potential in terms of both their impact and feasibility (Innovation Identification) vi) the selection among the former, of those that make more sense to be ported to the public sector through the development of adequate scenarios (Scenario Building) vii) the evaluation and ratification of the overall findings (Results Validation).

The SONNETS Innovation Identification Framework has guided the innovation identification activities within the SONNETS work-plan, but can also be used as a self-standing innovation framework for the public sector.