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At the User Needs First International Conference 2025 in Amsterdam, the panel discussion ‘Cooperation across Government: How to Escape the Silos?’ brought together diverse voices and powerful personal stories to explore one of the public sector’s most pressing challenges: breaking through organizational silos.

This article contains highlights of the panel discussion ‘How to be a mature human-centered government?’ at the User Needs First International Conference 2025.

Dr. Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, a global expert in digital transformation of government, delivered an insightful keynote at the User Needs First International Conference in Amsterdam. These are the key takeaways.

Digital services are having an increasingly larger impact on cities worldwide. The city of Espoo, Finland is no exception in that regard. Their digital agenda and how it puts user needs at the centre of these services, is something we can all learn from.

CommuniCity is a transformative citizen-centred EU funded project. It contains around 100 innovative Tech Pilots in Europe in urban and peri-urban areas to empower marginalised communities. Project manager Adeeb Sidani tells us more.

Talk London made an impression during the UserCentriCities summit in Brussels in 2023. The digital engagement platform was listed in the top 3 of most user-centric services in Europe. Greater London Authority’s Kate Lindemans and Selina Holliday tell us more about the platform and its development over the years.

Michela De Biasio and Barbara Santi are working on addressing the digital gender gap in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy, one of the challenges identified in Emilia-Romagna’s Digital Valley Common Good strategy. They aim to set an example and inspire other Italian regions, and even countries.

Carme Rodríguez- Pàmias tells us more about The Digital Services Guide and the user-centricity projects Catalonia has been working on.

During the UserCentriCities summit in May 2023, it once again became apparent that Estonia is at the forefront of digitalization. Something that can also be seen in Tallin’s efforts related to urban and city planning with digital twins. Christopher Raitviir shares the details of Tallin’s smart city approach.

“Involving users in service design should be as normal as brushing your teeth”, says Maureen Wijsman-de Hond. She shares Rotterdam’s user testing journey and gives valuable insights into the necessity of user testing.