PROJECT

Pioneering Romania’s first Digital Policy Lab for public sector innovation

Driving Digital Policy Innovation in Romania’s Government

In late 2023, Iceberg+ delivered a groundbreaking Digital Policy Lab for the Romanian National Authority for Digitalization (ADR), marking the operational launch of the first such policy innovation lab in Romania.

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This Digital Policy Lab serves as an experimental space for public policy, where emerging technologies (deep tech) and data-driven methods are used to test, prototype, and refine public policies before full-scale implementation. Over a three-year project, Iceberg+ – in partnership with Ernst & Young (EY) Romania and Sysdom – provided end-to-end services to design, operationalize, and run the lab as part of a broader national digital transformation initiative.

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The Challenge

Romania’s public sector faced the complex challenge of keeping up with rapid technological change and integrating advanced digital technologies into public services.

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Traditional policy-making processes were not equipped for the fast-paced, collaborative experimentation required to harness innovations like AI, blockchain, or advanced data analytics.

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ADR’s goal was to create a Digital Policy Lab platform that would allow government agencies to safely experiment with deep tech solutions and evidence-based policy approaches, ultimately improving public services for citizens and businesses. This meant developing new methods and tools for innovation management in public administration, and orchestrating a wide ecosystem of stakeholders (government, academia, industry) to tackle complex digital transformation problems.

In short, the project needed to pioneer a model for agile, data-driven policy design within Romania’s public sector – something never done before at this scale.

Beneficiary

The primary beneficiary of this effort was Autoritatea pentru Digitalizarea României (ADR) – Romania’s central agency for digital transformation. As the coordinator, ADR sought to strengthen the government’s capacity for innovation and evidence-based policy-making, especially in domains with high public impact. The Digital Policy Lab initiative was co-financed through an EU administrative capacity program, underscoring its strategic importance.

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Iceberg+ worked closely with ADR’s team and policy-makers across ministries to ensure the lab would meet public sector needs and align with national digital strategy goals.

Partnership Approach

To address the challenge, Iceberg+ assembled a multidisciplinary delivery team in partnership with EY Romania and Sysdom. This consortium combined Iceberg’s innovation consulting expertise with EY’s experience in public strategy and Sysdom’s technical know-how.

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Together, the partners worked hand-in-hand with ADR to co-create the lab’s methodology, platforms, and workflows, ensuring all solutions fit the public administration context. Iceberg+ led the project management and innovation design efforts, coordinating inputs from all partners.

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This collaborative approach was essential given the project’s breadth – from foresight research to on-the-ground policy experimentation.

The Solution

Iceberg+ delivered a comprehensive solution that encompassed new methodologies, toolkits, and pilot programs – effectively building the Digital Policy Lab from the ground up.

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‍All major outcomes of the Lab were developed and implemented by the Iceberg+ team, in line with ADR’s objectives.

Innovation Radar Methodology

We created a methodology to establish an “innovation radar” for public administration, using deep tech foresight to map out high-potential digital innovations. This framework provides public authorities with a way to identify, evaluate, and prioritize emerging technologies and research for possible adoption in public services.

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It guides staff through data collection and analysis of innovation trends, helping them track tech developments from early stages to full implementation in government.

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Experimental Policy Design Toolkit

Iceberg+ developed a toolkit of experimental methods for policy design, incorporating deep tech approaches.

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This “policy lab toolbox” equips public policy teams with practical techniques to rapidly prototype and test policy ideas using data and advanced tech. It includes templates (canvas-style working sheets) and methodologies like design thinking, scenario modeling, and assisted decision-making, adapted to the public sector.

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The toolkit enables running quick experiments and simulations of policy options (e.g. regulatory sandboxes, A/B testing of services) before committing to reforms, thus reducing risk and grounding decisions in evidence.

Research Analysis & Proof-of-Concept Toolkit

To bridge the gap between tech R&D and government adoption, we delivered a toolkit for analyzing deep-tech research products.

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This provides a structured way to assess research outputs (from academia or startups) for viability in public sector contexts, including evaluating technical maturity, impact, and integration requirements. It also offers guidelines for designing and managing proof-of-concept funding calls to pilot those innovations.

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In essence, this toolkit helps authorities quickly filter promising innovations and support their introduction through prototype projects.

Sandbox Framework Toolkit

Iceberg+ created a blueprint for experimental spaces (“sandboxes”) in which new digital solutions and policies can be safely tested.

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This framework outlines how to set up regulatory sandboxes or pilot environments within public administration – defining the legal, technical, and procedural setup to experiment with innovations (for example, testing a new e-government service with a small user group under relaxed regulations).

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It provides public institutions a playbook to run controlled experiments, iterate on feedback, and scale successful solutions.

Pilot Iterations in Key Domains

Crucially, the Digital Policy Lab wasn’t just theoretical – Iceberg+ facilitated five real-world pilot policy iterations to validate the tools and engage stakeholders. These pilots targeted high-impact domains: eCommerce, eGovernance & digital citizenship, digital transformation & innovation hubs, eHealth, and eEducation. In each area, the lab brought together relevant experts, public officials, and end-users to co-create and test innovative policy solutions. For instance, the lab ran interactive workshops on digital education policies, on boosting e-commerce for SMEs, and on improving data interoperability in government services.

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Over a ten-month period, up to four workshops per domain were held to experiment with policy ideas in a sandbox setting. This collaborative piloting approach ensured that the toolkits were applied in practice and that insights from the field directly informed the final methodologies.

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Throughout the solution implementation, Iceberg+ emphasized a “design-for-policy” approach – adapting design thinking and user-centric design to the policy-making process. We also integrated strategic foresight and quantitative modeling (e.g. trend analysis, scenario modeling for emerging tech) to help anticipate future challenges.

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An inclusive stakeholder engagement methodology underpinned all activities: the Lab actively involved over 1,500 stakeholders from academia, government, and the private sector in its workshops and policy co-creation sessions. This ensured the solutions were not built in isolation but with broad input, fostering buy-in and knowledge sharing across sectors.

The Impact

Public Sector Transformation

The Digital Policy Lab has had a significant public impact as a pioneering model for evidence-based policy innovation. It is the first of its kind in Romania, demonstrating how government can use a lab environment to tackle complex digital transformation issues in a structured, agile way. ADR’s leadership hailed the project as “un model de succes” – a model of success – in addressing complex problems of digital transformation with multiple stakeholders and strategic outputs.

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By operationalizing the Lab, Iceberg+ helped ADR become an “orchestrator of knowledge and innovative technologies” for modernizing public services.

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In practice, this means Romanian policy-makers now have a proven mechanism to experiment, learn, and make data-informed decisions on tech-enabled policies that directly benefit citizens and businesses.

Stakeholder Engagement and Culture Change

The lab’s interactive approach has engaged a large and diverse community (1500+ participants), fostering a new culture of collaboration between government, academia, and industry.

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Policy-making in the involved domains has become more inclusive and grounded in real-world evidence, as experts, civil servants, and end-users worked together in the Lab sessions. This is a notable shift towards transparency and citizen-centric design of public policies.

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The Lab also built new skills within the administration – through training and hands-on pilot projects, officials gained experience in using data, experimental methods, and emerging tech insights when crafting policies.

Innovative Outcomes

All the methodologies and toolkits delivered by Iceberg+ have been adopted as open resources for Romania’s public sector innovation efforts. ADR can reuse and adapt these tools for future challenges beyond the initial five domains.

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Moreover, the Digital Policy Lab directly contributed to strategic policy outcomes. Notably, insights from the Lab’s foresight studies and collaborative workshops fed into national strategic documents – for example, the lab’s work on AI and emerging technologies informed the National Strategic Framework for AI, which will underpin Romania’s first AI Strategy.

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By aligning its work with broader digital strategies (such as the EU’s Digital Decade goals), the Lab ensures Romania’s digital transformation initiatives are forward-looking and well-coordinated.

Legacy and Next Steps

The successful implementation of the Digital Policy Lab has established a repeatable model for policy labs in Romania’s government. It has proven the value of having a permanent innovation lab where policies can be “sandboxed” and improved before rollout.

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This model is likely to be extended to other areas of governance and could inspire similar labs at regional or local government level. ADR and its partners have set a precedent that tackling public problems with an innovation lab approach leads to more resilient, user-focused, and effective policies.

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As Romania continues its digital transformation journey, the Digital Policy Lab stands as a flagship innovation – demonstrating how public institutions can outsmart the status quo by embracing experimentation and deep tech in policy development.

The Timeline

2021 - 2023

Planning and implementation of the Digital Policy Lab project

(as part of the “Cadru strategic… 2021–2027” program)

Over this period, Iceberg+ and partners designed the lab framework, developed the toolkits and methodologies, and conducted five pilot policy iterations.

2023

The lab was fully operational by 2023

With the closing conference held in November 2023 to showcase results.

The Results

First Digital Policy Lab Established

A functioning Digital Policy Lab unit is now in place within ADR – the first public policy innovation lab in Romania – providing an ongoing experimental space for testing tech-enabled policies.

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The Lab has been officially institutionalized and is ready to support future policy innovation projects.

Comprehensive Innovation Toolkits

Four major deliverables (methodology & toolkits) were completed and handed over, covering innovation radar development, experimental policy design, research product analysis, and sandbox creation.

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These resources are already being used to guide evidence-based policy development in the public sector, and can be reused for new domains and training of policy-makers.

Multi-Domain Pilot Projects

Five pilot policy labs were run in priority domains (eCommerce, eGovernance/digital citizenship, innovation hubs, eHealth, eEducation), producing prototype solutions and policy recommendations in each. For example, the lab sessions on interoperability and open data in e-governance generated concrete proposals to improve data sharing among agencies.

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Each pilot involved cross-functional teams and end-users, ensuring practical, validated outcomes.

Stakeholder Reach and Engagement

The project achieved an unprecedented level of stakeholder engagement for a policy initiative – over 1,500 participants took part in Digital Policy Lab events and workshops. This included government officials from numerous ministries, IT experts, university researchers, private tech companies, and NGO representatives.

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The broad participation not only enriched the solutions but also built a network of change agents committed to digital innovation in governance.

Recognized Innovation Impact

The Digital Policy Lab has been recognized by public sector leaders as a successful and innovative model for governance. ADR’s president highlighted it as a best-practice example of tackling complex digital challenges collaboratively.

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The initiative also contributed to Romania winning accolades in digital government – for instance, ADR received praise for the National AI Strategy and the Digital Policy Lab as key milestones of innovation, crediting the expert teams (Iceberg+ and partners) behind them.

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The Lab’s alignment with strategic priorities (like the European Digital Decade) positions Romania as a forward-thinking actor in the digital policy arena.

Iceberg+ is proud to have been at the forefront of this transformative project

By delivering the Digital Policy Lab from concept to reality, we helped create a lasting public innovation platform that empowers Romanian authorities to design better policies for the digital age. This case stands as a testament to the power of partnership, visionary thinking, and “smart-ing” the market of public services through innovation – truly outsmarting the status quo with bold strategy and hands-on experimentation.