Precisely eight years ago, on 23 May 2014, the ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance sprang to life. Back in Lisbon, the then Prime Minister of Portugal - Pedro Passos Coelho - oversaw the signature of the Host Country and Bilateral agreements between the University and Portugal. David M. Malone, the Rector of ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ and Miguel Poiares Maduro, then Minister for Regional Development, signed the agreements that formally started ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ-EGOV.
A few weeks later, on 1 July 2014, the Operating Unit started its operations in the city of Guimar?es. It is, up to this day, still the only United Nations agency in Portugal that is not located in Lisbon. The first team of just five people included three former members of the EGOV Programme at the ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ International Institute on Software Technology in Macao: Tomas Janowski, Elsa Estevez, and Sara Fernandes. Additionally, two locally-recruited administrative members joined in late August: M¨¢rio Meira and M¨¢rio Peixoto.
Since then, ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ-EGOV has gone through several important steps into becoming the next Institute of the ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ, while also enlarging its team, research outputs, projects, and publications. In the upcoming days, get to see and hear what some of our longest-standing personnel have to say about the journey so far through short videos on our social media pages: and .
