A modern region is not created on paper; it is born when EU funds are transformed into better schools, safer roads, higher-quality public spaces, and digital services that reduce bureaucracy for towns and municipalities. The opening session will demonstrate how regional development must shift from slow processes to visible results—and why the keys to success will be stronger local governments, smart solutions, and investments that remain rooted in the community.

An innovative city emerges where it can attract talent, connect universities, startups, and corporations, and provide space for pilots - all without stifling innovation through bureaucracy. This discussion will highlight the deciding factors for becoming a magnet for ideas and investment: from hubs and living labs to AI, autonomous mobility, and robotics integrated into real-world municipal services.

The goal is for citizens to receive proactive assistance during key life events - such as losing a job, the birth of a child, caring for a loved one, or entering retirement. This discussion explores how the state is shifting from fragmented services and paperwork toward a support system built around life situations. The objective is not to create more portals, but to build a state that understands context, reduces bureaucracy, and delivers aid more actively, swiftly, with greater dignity, and increased trust.

Digital ID is expanding from police checks and postal services into additional life events, with new features being added and further credentials, including offline verification, planned for 2026. The question is no longer whether it works, but how quickly it will become the everyday standard.

Three countries, three different paths toward a mobile state. This debate will explore what drove the highest adoption rates, where they reached their limits, and which decisions they would make differently today.

The fight against corruption, money laundering, and economic crime today also depends on the speed of data processing. The Central Register of Accounts enables authorized authorities to more quickly identify where individuals under investigation hold accounts or safety deposit boxes, thereby reducing the time required for financial investigations and asset seizures. This session will demonstrate how digitization is becoming a practical tool for the state in the fight against serious crime.

For the first time in Slovakia, not only is the payment method changing, but the invoice itself is as well. QR payments linked to eKasa provide instant payment notifications to the cash register and enable cashless mobile sales without the need for a terminal. At the same time, eFaktúra converts invoices from PDF to structured data, reduces error rates, speeds up processing, and will affect hundreds of thousands of entities in the coming years. Together, these projects show that the state no longer wants to merely monitor transactions but to build a new digital infrastructure for them. What do these projects bring to the country? And what do they bring to hundreds of thousands of businesses?

The Recovery Plan built the state's digitization on 16 priority life events, and the new National Strategy for Information Society (NKIVS) 2026 - 2030 aims to expand this approach to 25 situations by 2030. This panel is not about visions, but about reality: which services can citizens now handle more easily, and where is the state still fragmented between different ministries?

A discussion among key stakeholders on how Slovakia will approach the challenges and opportunities of AI.