Smart DevOps Project: Final Conference Highlights the Successes of the Project’s Competences for Smart Cities
Dean Angelika Kokkinaki presented the School of Business output as a partner in the 3-year Erasmus+ Sector Skills Alliance Project
The DevOps Competences for Smart Cities (Smart DevOps) project consortium held a final online conference titled “Smart Employees for Smart Cities” on 25 November 2021. During the conference, Smart DevOps project partners presented the results of a 3-year Erasmus+ Sector Skills Alliance to an audience of more than 120 participants, representing Smart City sector professionals and employers, VET providers, and representatives of local, national, and European institutions.
The Smart DevOps project represented a concerted attempt to systematically approach the topic of required smart cities competences. In this respect, it contributes to closing the gap between today’s and future skills demands in the Smart Cities ecosystem, by developing educational programmes for Smart City professionals. The Conference was an opportunity to present the final project and pilot results of running the vocational training courses with over 1000 participants.
Smart DevOps Project Final Conference
The Smart DevOps final conference was organised by ALL DIGITAL and the University of Thessaly, with support from other project partners, including the University of Nicosia School of Business. The conference opened with a welcome by Peter Palvoglyi, CEO of ALL DIGITAL, who emphasized the role of cities and municipalities in the green and digital transition and commended the project partners for the results delivered in the last 3 years.
It continued with a keynote address by Professor Judith Hilde Semeijn from Open University the Netherlands titled “Career challenges in smart cities – How does the digital transformation of cities affect careers and what has to be done towards a sustainable career ecosystem in smart cities?”. In the keynote, she outlined the importance of being able to work in a healthy, happy, and productive way. One of the main challenges identified is how the city fit is unbalanced, which creates disadvantages among less educated people. Professor Semeijn suggested several solutions, such as the centralisation of skills and talents, with a lifelong development, the creation of career community and a network-centric organisation.
Dean Kokkinaki presented the pioneering Smart DevOps MOOC
After the keynote address, project partners took the stage to present specific Smart DevOps outputs. Among the presenters at the Conference was the Dean of the School of Business, Professor Angelika Kokkinaki, who presented the pilot delivery of the Smart DevOps Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Dean Kokkinaki explained the structure of the MOOC, the available support activities for the trainees and tutors, and the timeline of the course. The MOOC included 15 modules developed and delivered by experts under high standards of quality assurance. It delivered an impressive range of transferrable and digital skills for Smart City professionals through a flexible weekly workload and schedule, with its 252 graduates now able to validate their Certification on the Blockchain, as well as pursue specialised courses to advance their knowledge, competencies and skills as a Smart City Planner, Smart City ICT Manager or Smart City ICT Officer.
You can watch Dean Kokkinaki’s presentation here.
Other DevOps Partner Presentations/Speakers
Professor Hans Rüdiger Kaufmann from the University of Applied Management talked about the emerging smart city job roles and skills. The key objective of these activities was to identify innovative typologies of competences and synthesize them, an essential component for the development of the Smart DevOps training courses that followed. The analysis of the literature review and conducted interviews showed that the most requested competences for Smart Cities professionals are general technical transversal skills, especially the skills that enable individuals to switch from operational to strategic tasks, geospatial competences, and ICT skills.
Dr Theodor Panagiotakopoulos from Hellenic Open University presented the development of Smart DevOps Curricula. Based on the identified compentences and emerging job roles, the Smart DevOps team identified three new job roles for the Smart City sector (Smart City Planner, Smart City IT Head, and Smart City IT Officer) together with 42 matching skills. The competences are divided into four groups: Soft/transversal skills, digital skills, Smart City specific skills and DevOps skills. Using the Addie model, the consortium mapped the competences to job roles and developed Curricula for MOOC and specialisation courses. Dr Panagiotakopoulos emphasized that the future smart city employees will require a variety of new skills and that Smart DevOps training activities represent the first programme that can provide them.
Vasilis Kyriatzis from the University of Thessaly presented the pilot delivery of the Smart DevOps Specialization courses and Work-based learning. The specialisation courses were designed for each of the new job profiles created in the project. They are organised online self-paced study with regular contact sessions with trainers. Almost 40% of people that completed the MOOC course continued with the specialisation course. Course materials were provided in local languages (English, Greek, German, Italian and French). The specialisation courses blended learning runs for 250-274 hours (depending on the course) through a period of 6 months. The work-based learning was organised in partnership with municipalities and private businesses for 10 weeks.
Lastly, Professor Panos Fitsilis, Smart DevOps project coordinator from the University of Thessaly, and Professor Angelika Kokkinaki, presented the Smart City Body of Knowledge Book. Prof Fitsilis emphasized that the Smart DevOps project focused on promoting new technologies for smart cities development, new software development methodologies, training new smart cities employees and developing a network of key stakeholders. One of the tools that accommodate that is the Smart City Body of Knowledge edited by Prof Fitsilis and Prof Kokkinaki. The book aims to provide knowledge and updates on required skills and an inventory of competences for Smart City professionals of the future. Both authords emphasized that in a “software-enabled society” we must invest in people and win the war of talent with different actions, such as monitoring smart cities labour market needs, promoting smart cities body of knowledge and occupational profiles.
Fireside Chats
The conference programme also featured two fireside chats, respectively featuring:
- Stelina Chatzichristou from the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP).
- Two participants from Smart DevOps training activities: GiovanniManco from Italy, who shared his experiences as a participant in the Smart DevOps MOOC; and Konstantinos Asikis, who shared his experience from the specialization course.
Professor Fitsilis brought the conference proceedings to a close, highlighting that smart cities have to be resilient, sustainable, green, citizen-centric, secure, and innovative. He underscored how the Smart DevOps project contributed to that by identifying new job profiles based on required skills, as well as developing a VET Curricula and training activities to equip the people with the requisite competences. Ultimately, the project was anchored in properly preparing staff, inspiring students, and investing in people.
