Building Assessments for Twin Green and Digital Transition Readiness in Europe and Central Asian Cities

The UNDP Innovation Community in Europe and Central Asia supports 18 countries and territories in accelerating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. One of the key focus areas is urban transformation, where UNDP works with cities across the region to develop portfolios of diverse, innovative, and context-specific experiments that have impact. To reimagine urban development and governance challenges, UNDP has been using an approach at the intersection of sectors, technologies, and city realms, providing both tools and funding to prepare cities for the future. This includes developing frameworks and assessments to help cities understand their digital and green readiness, and to chart a path towards a twin transition - digital and green.

The Capstone project aims to build modules for 1) digital readiness assessment for cities for digital transition, 2) green readiness assessment for cities for green transition, and 3) a twin transition readiness assessment for cities, building on the previous two modules. The project will review existing assessment frameworks, including the one utilized by the UNDP Chief Digital Office for digital readiness assessment, and assess green transition readiness frameworks including available cases from Europe. The goal is to develop simple and easily applicable assessment frameworks for cities in Eastern Europe, Western Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia. The Capstone team will have the opportunity to test their frameworks with selected participating cities from UNDP.