Alexander Heichlinger 

Founder & CEO, GovInsight , Co-Founder & Chair of the European Cities of Sustainable Public Finances

Founder & CEO, GovInsight (www.govinsight.eu); Co-Founder & Chair of the European Cities of Sustainable Public Finances (www.cspf.eu) managed by the Austrian Centre for Public Administration Research (KDZ).


He is a member of the Executive Board of the Austrian Barcelona Community (ABC) as well as a Founding Member of Future Minds, an informal group of “innovative thinkers and doers”.


His expertise, leads and above passion are in the field of local/city government and management, public sector innovation/reform and digital transformation, International/European strategic, project, network and funding management.


Alexander was, until February 2020, a Senior Member (Expert) and Manager at EIPA Barcelona, a branch of the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).


He currently is also Coordinator of Metropolis City Manager Community (since 2019) and Executive Board Member of the City Management Chair of the Barcelona University of Pompeu Fabra (UPF).


Over the past 20+ years, he managed and delivered numerous large-scale multi-disciplinary and cross-national assignments –as a trainer/speaker, consultant and academic/author– for public sector organizations from across all EU countries (except Cyprus) and beyond (e.g. the Western and Southern Balkan, Turkey, China, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Israel, Georgia, Morocco, Dubai, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, U.S.A., Ukraine), as well as for European institutions (i.e. EC, EP, CoR, JRC) and other international organizations, e.g. Senior Advisor to ReSPA and OECD/SIGMA; UN Public Service Day/Forums (2009, 2012 and 2019); UNDP Local Administration Reform project (2019); Member of the Steering Committee of the Council of Europe’s Programme Best Practices on Regeneration of the European coastal towns (2012);


He was co-founder and chair of the European City Economic & Financial Governance Group (2014-2019) which brought together the CEOs/CFOs of eight major European cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Hamburg, London, Milan, Trondheim, Vilnius).



In 2018, he successfully co-led the EC comparative analysis on European Public Administration Country Knowledge – The EUPACK study by the European Commission, DG Employment.


From 2012-2013, he led the ‘city excellence cloud’ with seven medium-sized cities (Bilbao, Birmingham, Milan, Mannheim, Trondheim, Tallin, Tampere) and co-authored the result of this work in a publication, translated in several languages.


From 2008 till 2014, he managed and accelerated the European Public Sector Award (EPSA), the “Oscar” for the public administrations in Europe. In addition, he was Deputy Head of the eEurope Awards for Innovation in eGovernment (2001-2005), EC DG Information Society, as well as is jury member of the Austrian VerwaltungsPreis (2017,2019, 2021);


He (co-) authored and edited twelve books and many other papers are published under his name.


In 2012, he was recognized with the Dubai Public Excellence Award for his merits.


LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alexander-heichlinger


Tweet: @AlexHeichlinger

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