The United Nations University – Operating Unit on Policy-driven Electronic Governance (UNU‑EGOV) participated in the 13th International Summer School on Digital Government (OpenGov2026), held in Samos, Greece, from 6 to 10 July 2026.
The five-day programme combined expert lectures, workshops and an IDEATHON on Artificial Intelligence, open government, interoperability and responsible digital transformation.
Demetrios Sarantis, Senior Research Analyst at UNU-EGOV, contributed to the programme on 10 July with a lecture titled “Open Data Infrastructures and Interoperability”.
He presented open data infrastructures as a foundation for digital governance, explaining the technical, semantic, organisational and legal dimensions required for data exchange and reuse. The lecture highlighted open data portals, APIs, metadata standards, controlled vocabularies, data-sharing agreements and regulation, while addressing barriers such as data silos, legacy systems and weak institutional coordination.
Demetrios emphasized that publishing datasets alone is insufficient: sustainable, trustworthy infrastructures must support discoverability, accountability, auditability and effective collaboration across public organisations.
