Yesterday France beat World Champions Germany 2-0 in the semifinal. It was the best game of the EuroCup2016 so far. 

Watching the game at our local sportsbar, BlueBar in beautiful Saont Raphael

I had the fortune of watching the game with French friends in Saint Raphael just a few miles away from the impressive dtadium in Marseille where the semifinal was played. 

Let’s say that the air was vibrating with expectations that during the game transformed into hope, proudness and pure joy. There was not a single car not bumping the horn in the entire city last night after the game. 

French #1 daily sportpaper L’Equipe goes bananas today, ‘Extas’ & ‘The force of destiny’

As the French manager, Didier Dechamps said after the match: ‘We beat the best team in the world, the world champions’. 

Now we will have a great final on Sunday when hosts France play Portugal with the mighty CR7, Christiano Ronaldo. Will the young players of France ä namely, Griezmann, Pogba, Payet and Untiti once again be able to do an almost perfect patctocal game against a strong Portugal? 

After nearly a decade of “doing more with less,” government CIOs remain under pressure to further optimize IT and business costs while leading digital innovation in the public sector, according to Gartner. Government CIOs face organizational and cultural challenges that are barriers to harnessing the synergistic potential of social, mobile, data analytics, cloud and the IoT to drive transformational change. 


Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner, said legacy silos of systems, data and processes reinforce “business as usual” practices and behaviors that limit government participation in broader partner ecosystems capable of supporting fully digital end-to-end citizen services.


“In the digital service economy, government must make strategic investments in IT or risk perpetuating suboptimal business and service models that are financially unsustainable in the long term,” said Mr. Howard. “Government CIOs who are too slow to adopt the technology innovations that are transforming private sector service industries will increase business risk and cost, while compromising the mission of their organizations.”


Spending by national, federal and local governments worldwide on technology products and services is forecast to grow slightly by 0.3 percent to $430.1 billion in 2016, growing to $476.1 billion by 2020. This is a turnaround after a 5.2 percent decrease in 2015.


To enable government transformation initiatives, Gartner has identified the top 10 strategic technologies in 2016 and provides recommendations to CIOs and IT leaders regarding adoption and benefits. It is not a list of what government CIOs spend the most time or money on, rather it is a list of strategic technologies that Gartner recommends they should have a plan for in 2016.

1. Digital workplace

The government workforce is increasingly populated with digitally literate employees, from frontline workers to top-level executives. The digital workplace is a business strategy to boost employee engagement and agility through a more consumerized work environment. The digital workplace promotes collaborative work styles; supports decentralized, mobile work environments; and embraces employees’ personal choice of technologies.

2. Multichannel citizen engagement

Delivering an effective citizen experience requires a holistic approach to the citizen: (1) using data to capture and understand the needs and desires of the citizen; (2) leveraging effective social media and communications to actively engage citizens; (3) allowing the citizen to engage on his or her own terms; (4) understanding the citizen’s preferred engagement channels; (5) affording seamless transitions among channels; and (6) ultimately delivering a more satisfying set of citizen interactions. Adopting a citizen-centric information management strategy with multichannel citizen engagement opportunities will deliver quantifiable benefits.

3. Open any data

Open any data in government results from “open by default” or “open by preference” governance policies and information management practices. These make license-free data available in machine-readable formats to anyone who has the right to access it without any requirement for identification or registration. Open data is published as collected at the source (“raw”) at the lowest granularity, as determined by privacy, security or data quality considerations. Open data is accessible with open APIs and is not subject to any trademark or copyright.

4. Citizen e-ID

As government becomes more digitalized, digital identity will need to become more reliable in order to serve as the core for all digital transactions. Citizen electronic identification (e-ID) refers to the orchestrated set of processes and technologies managed by governments to provide a secure domain to enable citizens to access these core resources or services. Governments should require online authentication and identity proofing, because in-person verification methods are becoming outdated for offering citizens integrated and seamless access to resources and services. This “no wrong door” business model must be able to associate each citizen with one unique and persistent identifier within the bounds of what is culturally acceptable and legally permissible.

5. Analytics everywhere

Analytics is the collection and analysis of data to provide the insight that can guide actions to increase organizational efficiency or program effectiveness. The pervasive use of analytics at all stages of business activity and service delivery — analytics everywhere — allows leading government agencies to shift from the dashboard reporting of lagging indicators to autonomous business processes and business intelligence (BI) capabilities that help humans make better context-based decisions in real time.

6. Smart machines

In practice, smart machines are a diverse combination of digital technologies that do what we once thought only people could do. While capabilities are evolving rapidly, it already includes deep neural networks, autonomous vehicles, virtual assistants and smart advisors that interact intelligently with people and other machines. Government IT leaders must explore smart machines as enhancements to existing business practices, and possibly as foundations for new public services or ways of accomplishing business goals altogether.

7. Internet of Things

The IoT is the network of physical objects (fixed or mobile) that contains embedded technology to communicate, monitor, sense or interact with multiple environments. The IoT architecture operates in an ecosystem that includes things, communication, applications and data analysis, and is a critical enabler for digital business applications in all private-sector and public-sector industries. The business use cases and adoption rate by government agencies vary according to service domain or program mission. Government business models are emerging that take advantage of the IoT; for example, pay-for-use or subscription-based taxation models, smart waste bin collection on city streets, and the remote monitoring of elderly patients in assisted-living settings.

8. Digital government platforms

Governments face constant pressure to improve service delivery and save costs. Digital platforms reduce effort and facilitate user-centric design. These platforms deliver services such as payments, identity management and verification, reusable application services and notifications (for example, SMS and email) that are commonly used across multiple domains. Globally, governments are taking a platform approach to simplify processes, improve citizen interaction and reduce expenditure.

9. Software-Defined Architecture

Software-defined architecture (SDA) inserts an intermediary between the requester and the provider of a service so that the service can change more dynamically — in other words, it is the IT equivalent of changing the tires while the car is moving. Adding a layer of software to abstract and virtualize networks, infrastructure or security has proved to be a useful way of deploying and utilizing infrastructure. Applying the same technique to software architecture improves the manageability and agility of the code so that the organization can respond to the fluidity requirements of digital government and the IoT. Some government organizations have begun implementing software-designed infrastructure (SDI), but most are still operating in traditional data centers.

10. Risk-based security

The cybersecurity threat environment is constantly evolving, but it represents only one dimension of a complex, multifaceted set of threats and risks. Government CIOs must adopt a threat-aware, risk-based security approach that allows governments to make knowledgeable and informed decisions about risks in a holistic fashion, allowing for a wiser allocation of resources; more sound decisions about risks and their impacts on government missions, operations, assets and people; and engagement of senior leadership in risk-based decisions.

Four new trends emerged in 2016 with the potential to significantly benefit government performance within the next three to five years. Analytics everywhere, smart machines, software-defined architecture and risk-based security will each challenge governance, human resources management, sourcing and financing practices.

“Many of these technology trends change business models in ways that need to be reflected in more modern policies, especially those related to privacy or regulation,” said Mr. Howard. “CIOs will need to be front and center in providing advice to policymaking bodies and working with industry experts who can consult on options and impacts.”

Sweden has together with France and Germany launched a new initiative on EU level to shape a better future for EU citizens. 


On 11 July, the Swedish EU and Trade Minister Ann Linde met France and Germany EU ministers in Berlin to jointly raise the level of ambition of the EU’s work on job creation and to switch it up so important climate work world is committed after Paris. Together, they jointly sign a declaration that indicate a higher level of ambition and the strengthening of cooperation in some specific questions.

Isabella Lövin, Swedish Vice Prime Minister, Minister for Climate and international development cooperation.

“The world is facing great challenges, where cooperation and solidarity is crucial to our mutual success. Climate change, refugee crisis and unemployment are just some of the challenges that must be addressed together, across national borders. The European Union has been formed for a more peaceful and stronger Europe and has its most important tasks ahead of them”, says Isabella Lövin, Swedish Minister for Climate and international development cooperation.

“Brexit does not mean that European cooperation pause – on the contrary, need the political commitment to a united, democratic and transparent Europe strengthened. Sweden also need to find new partners as we, in the UK, loses a key partner in EU cooperation”, says Ann Linde, Swedish Minister for EU and Trade.

Ann Linde , Swedish EU and Trade Minister 

Monday’s meeting is about creating new jobs, switch to a fossil-free Europe and integrate millions of new people in our communities. It is also about standing up for the values ​​that characterized the postwar European cooperation, such as equality, openness and diversity, at a time when these values ​​are being challenged from many sides. It is more important than ever that European politicians to act responsibly and work for a Europe that can handle future challenges rather than as increased fragmentation.
Sweden as a country does and should as a role model in this field play a key role in the EU. We already have more influence than many other member countries of equivalent size. We will actively work for the EU to become better at solving the issues that people expect – to deliver to people’s lives. It is particularly important that the EU focuses on the trade creating conditions for more jobs with fair terms and is able to make a reality of the goals agreed at the climate summit in Paris. If the EU succeeds with this, people will notice results in their everyday life and then also the legitimacy of the EU to increase.