DESCRIPTION

To utilise open data, fully, smart cities officers must develop new competences (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and new curriculums for this new job profile should be defined. An Open Data City Officer (OpenDCO) is an innovative position in a smart city acting as the city’s central person for planning and building a smart city’s capacity on open data. This project aligns itself with the European policies in force, with the general objective of contributing to the development of digital skills for smart cities’ open data and, through that, planning and initiation of value-added services. This is a multifaceted concept that spreads in many dimensions such as social, environmental, economic and infrastructural, an OpenDCO should have an integrated view of open data, prioritizing the most important ones for a city. This highlights the very dynamic and highly transversal nature of this job role. Therefore, additional knowledge and skills are required from smart city officers to examine and incorporate competences into novel open data schemes and implementations. While not many cities around the world have such employees, the need for trained professionals to undertake this job role is urgent. Further, the need for such trained personnel will grow rapidly in the next few years as more and more cities are becoming digitalized and interconnected.

PROJECT OUTCOMES

The objectives/expected results of the OpenDCO project are concrete, important, and numerous:

a) Provide in a structured and systematic way a framework for educating smart cities staff on open data,

b) Develop an innovative curriculum for OpenDCOs (according to our best knowledge there is none available worldwide),

c) provide innovative learning tools,

d) close the competence and skills gap for municipalities officials,

e) promote the European Collaboration on smart cities’ education,

f) Increase the awareness of the Member States, Local Authorities, Municipalities and of various stakeholders that smart

cities open data competences is a complex and difficult to acquire,

g) Build-up on important work delivered from other ERASMUS+ projects, such as SmartDevOps (601015-EPP-1-2018-1-

EL-EPPKA2-SSA) (https://smartdevops.eu) and CRISIS project (2021-1-EL01-KA220-HED-000032257).

PARTNERS

• HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY (E10209096 – EL)
• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS (E10174358 – EL)
• UNIVERSIDADE DO MINHO (E10209514 – PT)
• FERNUNIVERSITAT IN HAGEN (E10208118 – DE)