Speakers
Blaž Golob, Director CeGD, Chairman of the conference
Blaž GOLOB
is the founding Director of the Centre for
eGovernance Development for South East
Europe established during the Slovenian EU
Presidency in May 2008. He is also the
president of the Bled Forum on Europe
Research Association which organises an
annual international conference on future
challenges and responses of European Union.
Additionally, he is a member of the Planning Committee of the Millennium Project which publishes annual State of the Future Report on 15 Global Challenges, Chair of the Millennium Project Node in Slovenia and a member of the Business Advisory Council for South Eastern Europe (BAC for SEE).
His fields of expertises are European affairs, foresight (futures studies), policy making and law. He graduated in Ljubljana at Faculty of Law, made his specialisation on European Law at Cambridge University and continued his PhD studies in political science at University of Ljubljana. During his past work experiences he worked as an editor for business and legal magazines GV publishing house in Ljubljana (1993-1996), as a president of international NGO in Brussels (1996) and as high level official (Undersecretary) for various ministries of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia and Slovenian Research Agency (1997-2008). Between 2000 and 2003 He worked for the European Commission Joint Research Centre (IPTS), where he was a member of the Commission’s Enlargement Futures team. He is an author of the European Commission study-report on; S&T Institutions and S&T Policies in the EU Acceding Countries; Challenges for the Development of the Knowledge Based Economy (EC 2004).
Niels Soelberg, Vice President, Public Sector, Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa
Niels Soelberg was appointed vice president, Public Sector, for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in September 2009 and drives Microsoft Corp.’s efforts to help governments and citizens in the region leverage technology to drive transformation and digitalization in the public sector. In this role, Soelberg works closely with the Microsoft Area Public Sector general managers across all of EMEA to align strategies and share government best-practices implementation to meet the requirements of these countries in providing efficient citizen services and fueling economies.
As a member of the Microsoft Worldwide senior leadership team, Soelberg also plays an integral role in helping shape global Public Sector strategies for better engagement with governments and Microsoft Partners operating within this sector.
Soelberg joined Microsoft in 2001, leading the Services and Support organization for Northern Europe. In 2004, he was named senior director for Enterprise and Partner Group sales in Western Europe before being appointed general manager for Microsoft Public Sector in Western Europe in July 2007. In these years, he contributed strongly to the success of the Public Sector business by recruiting specialists within the public sector to his team. With a deep knowledge of regional and national governments, healthcare, education, and public safety and national security, this team optimized the value of Microsoft technology to both Public Sector customers and the Public Sector partner network, and continues to do so today.
Soelberg has more than 20 years of experience in the IT business, starting at HP as EMEA Business Development manager for independent software vendors such as Informix, Oracle Corp., SAP AG, Sybase Inc. and Dun & Bradstreet. He then moved to AT Kearney-EDS, where he was responsible for budgets and services, leading strategic large outsourcing projects for EDS Nordic.
Soelberg has spoken on the topic of technology in the public sector at numerous international conferences such as the
Friends of Europe round table, and he also blogs for
Microsoft Europe. In particular, he focuses on the topic of cloud computing and how this technology has a positive impact on economy and environment.
He lives in Denmark with his wife and son. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, golfing and canoeing. Soelberg has an Academy Profession Degree in leadership and management.
Lorenzo Madrid, Microsoft
Lorenzo Madrid has over 30 years of working experience in the ITC industry, many of them throughout the Latin America region. He joined Microsoft in 2003, as the Public Sector Director for Brazil and thereafter moved to the USA to become Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer for the Latin America Region and in 2007, he was appointed as the World Wide Director for the Government Interoperability Initiative.
During his professional career, Lorenzo was the CIO for Education Secretary - State of Sao Paulo, Brazil- , providing ITC services to supply the demand for IT education and Internet access in 6.000 schools, 300.000 teachers and 6 Million students.
Lorenzo also participated as a consultant for the Brazilian Government on the technical architecture of innovative e-government Systems such as the SISCOMEX, (for handling Import and Export on-line documents) and in the On-Line Income Tax System. These systems incorporate the use of multiple IT platforms and support over 55 millions of users.
He has been keynote speaker in several international events, such as COMDEX, The Economist World Forum, the World Wide Forum in Technology for Tax Systems, the West Indies Government Conference and the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policies, addressing the impact of technology in society and its importance to leverage economic growth.
In the USA, he has recently been appointed as one of the advisors for the National Science Foundation for the e-government research chapter and he is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center of Technology for Government at the University of New York-Albany.
Lorenzo Madrid holds a BSc in engineering from the Polytechnic School - University of São Paulo, where he also had his MSc work in Calculus. He has published three books and several articles about the impact of technology in society.
Indra Samite
She studied at Drexel University in Philadelphia (USA), where she obtained degrees B.Sc. Finance and B.Sc. Accounting. From 1986 to 1988 she continued her studies and obtained an MBA degree.
She started her professional career as Founding shareholder and Director of Operation at Bank Service – credit card third party, where she was employed from October 1991 to November 1995. Further on she worked as Legislative Assistant at Economics Commission of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia (March 1991 - May 1993), she was a Deputy Director at Latvian Development Agency (September 1993 - September 1994), and she worked as Advisor on Foreign Aid to the Prime Minister in Cabinet of Ministers (October 1993 - September 1995). In September 1994 she got a position of State Minister of External Resources at Ministry of Finance, from October 1994 to October 1995 she had a position of Deputy in Saeima (Parliament), and from May to December 1995 she had a position of Minister of Finance at Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Latvia. She was a Consultant in EBRD Loan Agreement negotiations at Riga Water (February 1996 - December 1996), and she was a Director/EU Phare Team Leader at Latvian Environmental Investment Fund (May 1996 - May 1999). She had a position of a Councilwoman at Riga City Council Finance & Budget & Transportation Committees (March 1997 - March 2001), and she worked as an Executive Vice President/Project Manager at Unipensija Open Pension Fund (October 1999 - February 2003). From December 2004 to February 2008 she was a Managing Director at Cleanaway. Currently (from February 2008) she has a position of Director of Business Development and a position of Baltic Director of Localization Services at Tilde.
Jerome C. Glenn, Director Millennium Project
Jerome C. Glenn co-founded
and directs the Millennium Project,
a leading global participatory think tank
supported by international organizations,
governments, corporations, and NGOs, which
produces the internationally recognized
State of the Future annual
reports for the past 14 years.
Jerome Glenn invented the "Futures Wheel", a
futures assessment technique; Futuristic
Curriculum Development, and concepts such as
conscious-technology, transinstitutions,
tele-nations, management by understanding,
feminine brain drain, nodes as a
management concept for interconnecting
global and local views and actions, and
definitions of environmental security,
collective intelligence, and scenarios.
He has consulted for governments,
corporations, UN organizations, and NGOs.
Saturday Review named him among the
most unusually gifted leaders of America for
his pioneering work in Tropical Medicine,
Future-Oriented Education, and Participatory
Decision Making Systems in 1974. He was
instrumental in naming the first Space
Shuttle the Enterprise and banning the first
space weapon (FOBS) in SALT II. He has
published over 100 future-oriented articles,
spoken to over 300 organizations, written
several books (Future Mind, Linking the
Future, and co-author of Space Trek), and
editor of Futures Research Methodology
Version 3.0.
Dr. Zoran Stančič, Deputy Director-General, European Commission, Directorate-General for the Information Society and Media
Dr. Zoran Stančič is Deputy Director-General in the European Commission, DG INFSO since 2009.
Trained as an engineer he started his professional career as a research assistant at the Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana. In 1994 he was employed as the Head of the Spatial Information Centre of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Associate Professor at the Department of Geodesy.
From 1990 till 2000 he was a research fellow or visiting professor at the University of Arkansas, the Delft University of Technology, the University of Reading, the Boston University, the University of Trieste and the University of Paris. Zoran Stančič has published seven scientific books and a number of scientific papers on quantitative methods in archaeology and remote sensing.
During 1999 - 2000 he was Deputy Director of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
From the year 2000 to 2004 he was State Secretary for Science at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport in Slovenia.
In the period 2004 - 2009 he served as Deputy Director-General in the European Commission, DG Research.
Prof. dr. Diana Šimić
Diana Šimić is a professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organisation and Informatics. She chairs the eSouthEastern Europe Initiative of the Regional Cooperation Council. She held positions of the Assistant Minister responsible for Information Society at the Ministry for Science and Technology of the Republic of Croatia and the Deputy State Secretary at the Central State Administrative Office for e Croatia.
She participated in drafting and implementation of national policy and strategic documents related to the development of information society in Croatia, including the e-Croatia Programme (2003), One-Stop-Shop Strategy (2004), National Programme of Information Security (2005), Broadband Strategy (2006) and e-Business Strategy (2007). She chaired the Coordination of the Croatian Government for implementing the project of central e Government portal MojaUprava.hr. Her current activities include lecturing and consulting in the area of e Government and e Business.
Prof. Alexander Prosser
Prof. Alexander Prosser habilitated at WU in 1998 and held positions at
HEC, Paris and the University of Technology, Sydney. His research fields
are eGovernment and electronic citizen participation. He co-founded the
EVOTE conference series, the EDEM conference series (now part of the DEXA
cluster), and co-organises the Eastern European eGov Days and the
Internationale Rechtsinformatiksymposium IRIS. He chairs the Forum
eGovernment and is member of the board of the Austrian Computer Society.
Alexander has well over 100 academic publications and also organised
several academic research pilots, among them three Internet voting pilots
with a system designed and developed by his own research team.
Organisations he provided expertise for in research projects include the
Council of Europe, Eurocontrol, the Austrian Federal Chancellery, IBM,
a-trust, the Federal Data Processing Agency, the Ministry of the Interior,
Wiener Zeitung (the official journal of the Republic) and the City of
Vienna.
Alexander’s teaching focus has been on ERP and business intelligence using
SAP systems since 1994. He built up the SAP-based teaching programmes at
the University of Technology Sydney, Fachhochschule Salzburg and WU. All
subjects he designed and currently teaches are SAP-certified. Alexander is
member of the SAP university alliance and one of the few members of the
world-wide SAP Business by Design lighthouse programme.
Dan Baelum
- Danish and based in Denmark
- Educated in the Public Sector in Denmark as Librarian
- Sales Manager and later Sales Director always with focus on Public Sector customer, in Texas Instruments, NCR, IBM and Microsoft
- From 1999 to 2010 Public Sector Director Microsoft Denmark with responsibility of sales, marketing and relationship with the Danish Public Sector including Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands
- From 2010 Microsoft Shape The Future Director EMEA
Prof. dr. Pavle Sicherl,Sicenter and Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Professor Pavle Sicherl, Founder of SICENTER and principal researcher, 1993-, Professor of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (1975-2003); macroeconomic adviser in the Harvard University Development Advisory Service team in Ethiopia, (1970-1974); in 1960’s Deputy Director of the Yugoslav Institute of Economic Research in Belgrade.
Ph.D. (economics) and Dipl.Econ., Univ. of Ljubljana; M.A. Development Economics (USA). Speciality: growth and inequality, he introduced a new statistical measure, S-time-distance, to amend the present methods of analysing disparities in many fields. For this idea he received many fellowships and invitations: Senior Fulbright Research Award (Yale), London School of Economics, Institute of World Economics (Kiel), Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna), etc. Visiting professor abroad, project leader for international and national projects, and consultant to the World Bank, OECD, UN, ILO, UNIDO, INSTRAW, ITU, EUROCHAMBRES.
one pager
Centre for eGovernance Development (CeGD) and Centre for eGovernance Development (CeGD) organised a three-day event on Futures of eGovernance in Central East Europe targeted at government policymakers and decision makers focused on how technology can transform the public sector in citizen services, education, and competitiveness of economy. More in the attachement.One Pager
Summary REPORT
 |
Summary report on Renaissance for eGovernance More » |
