On the 11^th and 12^th of July, the Skills4Cities project  (Smart Skills for Smarter Cities, No: 2020-1-BG01-KA202-079071) had a new transnational project meeting in Krems (Austria) hosted by the local project partner ECQA – European Certification and Qualification Association. The project meeting happened in the University of Applied Sciences in Krems.

During the first part of the meeting, project partners made the final review of the Intellectual Output 1 and its different results, which have been published and are already available in the project website:

• Smart City Competencies Map

• Reference Competencies Framework  

• VET Curriculum

• User Guide for implementation

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Once validated and given the last input about the IO1, the next point in the Agenda was the skills specification based on the EQF model under the Intellectual Output 2. Also some administration issues were discussed.

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What is the Intellectual Output 2 about - Validation tools for smart city competencies

There are two main results foreseen under the IO2 performed during the Skills4Cities project:

• Guidelines for Validation of competencies for a smart city administration which clarify the basic features of validation and identifies and recommends referent phases of this process.

• Rules for Certification of smart city roles that describe the process of examination, certification, and recognition of the competences acquired in the training of the target groups based on the framework elaborated under this project.

The purpose of both, the validation Guidelines and the Rules for certification, is to make possible the implementation and the sustainability of the impact of IO1 - Toolkit for smart cities competencies framework. The validation tool will be a unified certification schema for the smart city professions, it will support the definition and development of the competencies required for smart city job roles, will define and verify quality criteria for training organizations and trainers to assure the same level of training all over Europe and will serve as a centralized instrument for promoting all certified job roles in the interested smart cities. 

Apart from the discussion about the project and the Intellectual Outputs, the project team had the opportunity to visit and talk about other potential collaboration with other European project related to data management for cities. There was also a visit planned to the eVRyLab from the university, which contains a pioneering technology in the field of movement in virtual space and thus becoming a pioneer in digitalization in Lower Austria.

What is Skills4Cities about?

​The main objective of the project is to develop and test learning and validation tools for the training of experts, personnel and managers of smart city projects for their newly emerging roles.

Project Impact and Sustainability

All project results will be available in all partner languages (5) and in English, facilitating this way their use even by stakeholders in non-participating countries. All materials will be accessible through the project website for free.

​The project impact envisages a rise of awareness on the new roles of the cities' staff regarding the smart city-related challenges and increasing the efficiency of the cities as a result of an improved competencies of the HR of the cities. The last will be a result of a certified training based on the new competencies framework and the training curricula and materials, elaborated under the project.

A potential longer-term benefit could be considered the opportunity to link the reference competencies framework and the validation mechanism for recruitment, training or retraining of personnel working on smart city projects, to the national and European qualification systems and to have it recognized on national and European levels.

There was a new transnational meeting scheduled on the 10^th of October in Bilbao (Spain) and will be hosted by GAIA.