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City of Skopje Innovation Centre – SkopjeLab

Summary

City of Skopje Innovation Centre – SkopjeLab is the first public sector innovation lab on the Balkans established in July 2017 with a mission to work on finding innovative approaches to address challenges and problems facing the city. 

As a pilot project between the City of Skopje and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Skopje Lab is currently lead by SmartUp Social Innovation Lab.

Find more at skopjelab.mk

Skopje Lab works at multiple levels, internally with the city administration – between departments, and as a mediator between the City and all other stakeholders (citizens, academia, companies, municipalities and CSOs) to jointly co-create, prototype, test and validate innovative solutions

Skopje Lab leads and accelerates the process of creation of innovation and strives to provide an environment where the process of innovating with users can be facilitated and be subject to experimentation in order to come up with new or better services, projects, policies.

In that regard Skopje Lab is constantly working on identifying new ways of involving different actors in the process of innovation, fostering a culture of innovation in the city and building the capacity of the public administration to more easily respond to citizens’ requests and adapt to the climate change challenges.

Key challenges Skopje Lab is working on:

Sustainable city development

Public services

Air pollution

Waste management

Key results

Center for technical support of citizens for submitting e-applications

In times of the pandemic the need for digital services, as well as support for the citizens who want to access them, increased significantly. The City of Skopje, through the project DIGITALL, implemented by Skopje Lab, established a Center for technical support of citizens for submitting e-applications.

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Redesign of 8 green public spaces

Achieved to initiate and start a process for redesign of 8 abandoned green public spaces in Skopje to transform them into a climate quarters that offer meaningful citizens experience.

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Redesign of the public service for collection of bulky waste

Currently Skopje Lab works with all concerned stakeholders to design a better service delivered by the PE Komunalna Higiena, with a purpose to clean the city and reduce the % of bulky waste that finishes at the landfill.

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Innovation framework for the City of Skopje

Developed an Innovation framework to improve the city processes. The purpose is to help the City of Skopje to create better services and projects for the city and the citizens.

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Interactive visual and easy to access data sets

Enabled opening of interactive visual and easy to access data sets that provide information on the way households heat their homes in winter as to enable identification of solutions to fight air pollution.

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Assessment of public services

Co-creating questionnaires for assessment of the public services that City of Skopje offers to its citizens. The main goal is to continuously identify opportunities for service improvement.

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For full Report of SkopjeLab Click here!

The Future

In 2021, Skopje Lab evolved into the Skopje Development Institute, a foundation co-established by the City of Skopje and Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, with the aim to build on the achievements of Skopje Lab and facilitate the City’s future development towards sustainability, equity, and well-being.

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