TRUEGov aims to address the current limitations in cross-chain interoperability and scalability, by providing a sustainable framework that employs advanced blockchain technology and semantic web to ensure efficiency and resilience. The focus of TRUEGov is on e-governance applications, starting from e-voting and extending to digital public services across municipalities and public institutions.
Can you briefly present your team?
Konnecta Systems coordinates and implements the TRUEGov platform, bringing together a compact multidisciplinary engineering team (software architects, backend engineers, ontology experts, blockchain specialists, and UX designers). The project operates through close collaboration with e-Trikala (Municipality of Trikala), who provide pilot sites, user feedback, and operational validation. Our approach combines hands-on engineering (SCG, Layer-2 rollups, identity agents) with iterative user co-creation and municipal deployment practices, ensuring the solution is technically robust, user-friendly, and ready for real-world adoption.
How did you come up with this project idea and what benefits will it bring to the end users?
Building on lessons from TREVO (OC1), which validated SSI and ZKP approaches for e-voting but revealed gaps in scalability, semantic interoperability, and usability, TRUEGov was conceived to address the next barriers. These include achieving energy-efficient, large-scale voting, standardising election semantics for interoperability, and removing the technical burden from election teams. We implemented an ontology-driven, no-code platform. It automates smart contract generation, integrates W3C-compliant SSI for secure authentication, and uses Layer 2 zero-knowledge rollups for privacy-preserving scalability. As a result, end users benefit from interoperability across systems, an intuitive no-code UI that enhances usability, support for diverse election types, scalable and energy-efficient vote processing, as well as a solution that fits municipal needs and drives higher adoption and trust.
How is TrustChain supporting your growth and what role does it play for the next steps in your development?
TrustChain has played a pivotal role in advancing TRUEGov from an initial concept to a validated, deployable solution. The program provided essential structure, technical feedback, and ecosystem visibility, which enabled us to refine our architecture, test advanced components such as the Smart Contract Generator and Layer-2 rollups, and validate our approach with real municipal users. Notably, TrustChain OC4’s focus on user-centric design strengthened our co-creation practices, workshops, iterative feedback loops, and user stories, resulting in significant improvements to the dashboard user experience and onboarding processes. This support allowed us to identify specific adoption pathways and improve interoperability by leveraging open standards. Looking ahead, TrustChain serves as a foundation for the next phase, including expanded pilot deployments, broader municipal engagement, integration with emerging EUDI Wallet infrastructures, and preparation for scaling TRUEGov within the European digital governance ecosystem.
Why did you apply to the TrustChain call and has your vision changed since then?
We applied to the TrustChain call because it provided the ideal environment to advance our vision for secure, interoperable and user-centric digital governance. The programme’s focus on decentralised identity, privacy-preserving technologies and cross-chain interoperability matched exactly the gaps we identified after TREVO, while OC4’s emphasis on user-centric design aligned with our intention to co-create solutions with municipalities and citizens. Since joining, our vision has not fundamentally changed, but it has become more concrete and grounded: user feedback, pilot activities and TrustChain mentoring helped us refine the platform architecture, prioritise semantic interoperability, and better understand the practical needs of public-sector deployments. In short, the core idea remained the same, but its implementation became clearer, more realistic and more aligned with real-world adoption paths.
What is the most valuable takeout from the TrustChain project and why was the topic of the Open Call important to you/your team?
The most valuable takeaway from TrustChain was the opportunity to validate our approach directly with real users and refine TRUEGov through structured, user-centric design practices. OC4’s focus on interoperability and usability was particularly important to our team because it aligned perfectly with the challenges we wanted to solve after TREVO: making secure e-governance not only technically robust but also understandable, usable and trustworthy for municipalities and citizens. TrustChain gave us the framework, feedback and ecosystem exposure needed to strengthen our semantic interoperability approach, improve the usability of our no-code dashboard, and ensure that the platform reflects actual governance workflows rather than purely technical assumptions.
Did you establish collaboration with any of the TrustChain teams or plan for any kind of synergies? If yes, what is the biggest potential in such collaborations?
Engagement with the TrustChain community has created new opportunities to combine complementary technologies that enhance TRUEGov. Leveraging insights from our TREVO OC1 work and other project outputs like MUSAP OC1, we have already adopted proven approaches for identity and key management. We are also in discussions for potential collaborations to further enhance the usability and decentralization aspects of our solution.
What are your expectations regarding the TrustChain software ecosystem and its contribution to the NGI priority areas?
We expect the TrustChain software ecosystem to evolve into a coherent collection of reusable, standards-aligned building blocks that support the NGI priorities of trust, privacy, interoperability and user empowerment. For TRUEGov, this ecosystem is valuable because it promotes common patterns around decentralized identity, verifiable credentials, secure data exchange and cross-chain communication, all critical elements for next-generation e-governance. As these components mature, they can greatly reduce integration effort, increase interoperability and accelerate adoption of privacy-preserving, human-centric solutions across Europe. In this sense, TrustChain contributes not only tools but also a shared technical culture that aligns with NGI’s long-term vision of an open, sovereign and trustworthy internet.
What are the next steps for your team?
The next steps for our team focus on strengthening TRUEGov beyond the scope of the pilot and preparing it for wider deployment. We plan to continue refining the Smart Contract Generator, improving semantic models and extending interoperability with emerging EUDI Wallet infrastructures. Building on the feedback from the Trikala pilot, we aim to enhance the dashboard’s usability, expand support for additional consultation and election types, and optimise the rollup server for larger-scale operations. In parallel, we intend to engage more municipalities, explore partnerships within the TrustChain ecosystem and pursue opportunities for integrating TRUEGov into broader European digital governance initiatives.
What is the message you would give to new and potential applicants to TrustChain Open Calls?
Our message to new and potential applicants is simple: TrustChain is a highly supportive environment if you want to validate ambitious ideas with real users and strengthen them through structured technical and user-centric guidance. The programme gives you access to a knowledgeable ecosystem, mentors who challenge your assumptions, and a community that helps you refine your approach around interoperability, privacy and decentralised identity. Come prepared to iterate, listen to user feedback and adapt your architecture, the more you engage, the more value you’ll extract. If your project aims to build trustworthy, human-centred digital services, TrustChain is an opportunity to mature your ideas faster and with better alignment to European priorities.