One of the goals of Innovative Sofia, also identified in the Digital Transformation Strategy for the City of Sofia, is to turn Sofia into a market for digital products and services created by the local companies. Another important task we have is to share the city’s success stories with local and foreign partners to build the city brand and establish the image of Sofia as a technological hub in the region and in Europe.

Thus, in the last months we collected and systematized information on the GovTech ecosystem in Sofia – the companies that create innovative and digital solutions for the development of the state and municipal administrations, as well as the other organizations, institutions, and companies that are also part of the GovTech ecosystem in Sofia and support its advancement. 

Sofia has a highly developed ICT sector. Many of the companies create solutions that improve the delivery of public services by state and local governments, with citizens being the end-users or indirect beneficiaries of these products. To help the sector take shape, bring attention to its main players, and systematize the resources that can support their future growth, we just published the document GovTech Matrix Sofia – the first map of the GovTech companies in the capital.

 

 

The matrix includes a list of over 40 companies and 120 other organizations, institutions, and other resources that are also part of the GovTech ecosystem in Sofia. All listed companies have come with various solutions used at city/state level and don’t necessarily define their activity as strictly positioned in the GovTech sector.

Under GovTech (Government+Technology) we use a broad definition, namely the technological infrastructure that the government/municipal administrations use to process their internal work or provide services to their clients – the citizens and the business. 

 

The GovTech matrix is the third part of a series of matrices dedicated to Sofia’s priority industries that our team is working on. At the end of 2019, we published the Sofia Gaming Studios Matrix together with Game Dev Summit. The Matrix includes information aimed to shape up the capital’s gaming sector – one of the sub-sectors of creative industries. In October, together with the Bulgarian Fintech Association we published the Sofia Fintech Mapping with detailed information on the local fintech ecosystem. We’re planning the preparation of more sector matrices focused on other priority sectors in Sofia.  

We have been systematizing the information included in the GovTech Matrix for weeks. We are extremely grateful to our partners who supported our work on this project, among whom are BASSCOM, Sofia Tech Park, the Bulgarian Fintech Association, PARA – the Professional Association of Robotics and Automation, AI Cluster Bulgaria, Health and Life Sciences Cluster Bulgaria, BRAIT, Trending Topics, DEV.BG, Innovation Center Inc., and other representatives of the local ecosystem.

The document doesn’t claim to be exhaustive and is still a work in progress. See the information below and please feel free to contribute by sending us an email, and we will include all input into our next update.