Elevate Your CIONET Experience!

About

Across the public and institutional sectors, we are currently using AI to accelerate the status quo. We are writing code faster, summarising reports more efficiently, and automating fragments of existing workflows. But as Youri Segers (CEO Digipolis) notes, this is merely "AI-izing", putting a digital sauce over 20th-century processes.

The real strategic risk is no longer the failure to implement AI; it is the staggering cost of maintaining legacy processes that no longer make sense in an AI-augmented world. For leaders in city administrations, healthcare, and regional agencies, the gap between technological speed and organisational "structural gravity" is reaching a breaking point.

The Strategic Dilemma: Innovation vs. Governance

Digital leaders are caught in a 'Sovereignty Squeeze' and a 'Procurement Trap':

• The Velocity Gap: As Steven Vermeulen (Digitaal Vlaanderen) notes, framework contracts are often drafted years in advance, meaning technical failure is 'baked in' because specifications become obsolete before the contract even begins.

• The Burden of Legacy: AI makes technical tasks like debugging cheaper, but "Frankenstein systems" and calcified approvals remain primary barriers. 

• The Accountability Factor:  In a public or medical context, "first mover" advantage is often a risk. As Maarten Walravens (AZ Sint-Maarten) emphasises, every new AI tool must justify its seat at an already "full table," accounting for dependencies, risks, and the courage to "throw it out" if it fails to deliver. 

The Agenda: A Leadership Clinic for the Digital Decade

 This roundtable is a peer-to-peer working session focused on the "how," not the "what". We will move past the hype to discuss practical frameworks for change:

• Buying Outcomes, Not Specs: Moving toward "Explorative Procurement" by hacking projects into phases that allow for reflection and course correction. 
• Collapsing the Feedback Loop: Shifting from lengthy requirement documentation to "vibe coding" and immediate, business-led prototyping. 
• Redefining Professional Roles: Transforming analysts from "spec writers" to "solution architects" and preparing for a future where traditional roles, like UX designers, may fundamentally change. 
• The Sovereignty Choice: Making deliberate decisions on Intellectual Property (IP) to avoid vendor lock-in while maintaining the massive computing power required for mdern AI. 

The Format: Candid & Confidential

• Strictly Peer-to-Peer: Only for Digital Leaders from public and semi-public bodies.
• Chatham House Rules: A safe space to discuss what actually happens when a project hits a wall or an audit looms.