There are various unstructured attempts at municipal and EU level to build up an exchange of knowledge about Smart Cities. This is especially true for towns and municipalities of smaller size across Europe, although they are in need of digital innovations to stay attractive for citizens, enterprises and tourist. Apart from the „Nordic Smart City Network“, Smart City activities are more national based, there is no mutual learning from each other or the exchange is limited only to metropolises and larger cities. Despite the pressure especially on small and medium-sized cities in the course of digitization, the municipal administration employee level is not taken into account. But they are the implementers. For sinstance in Germany and Italy administrations have great decision-making power in and for digital projects, but are not sufficiently qualified for these strategic tasks and are therefore less able to act. To offer a solution the project aims at setting up a European training- and knowledge platform that makes the digitization of towns more tangible for the target group of administrative employees, administrative assistants as well as for stakeholders and citizens. Additionally partners will create a curriculum to qualify relevant actors in administrations to become "Digital City Experts" and thus build up in-house knowledge on the topic Smart City. To equip this process and also provide options for self-study, learning materials on relevant innovative topics will be developed, such as a MOOC, learning videos etc. During Smart City Bootcamps multipliers will be invited to discuss digital concepts for the future town and exchange experiences and good practices on the knowledge platform. Due to the rapid digital development and relevance for the climate discussion, Smart City as a topic has to be discussed at European level and can only make sense in cross-border exchange. With its efforts to bring people and opinions together to discuss the "Town of the future", the project activities also hold a strong macro-social component relevant for societies as a whole. As regards the impact partners seek to develop a general understanding about digital and smart innovations from northern to southern Europe beyond actual Smart City developments in the fast growing metropolitan areas. Before this background the training of administrative staff will help them understand Smart City concepts. The project will enhance their competences in terms of how intelligent, small and medium sized cities are operating; how they can organize, communicate and involve citizens in Smart City projects, how they can tackle different topics with intelligent solutions such as work efficiency of cities, sustainability and the quality of life but also matters of safety, transparency and data protection. In the long run there is no getting around the digitalization of towns and municipalities. Hence the project contributes to qualifying staff of towns by enabling them to understand technical implications as well as risks and translate Smart City development to citizens.
A basis of teaching and learning materials as well as structures for in-service training was to be created for the target group of administrative actors in charge of municipal digitalisation in the broadest sense. For this purpose, a modular curriculum applicable throughout Europe, a digital learning platform, a Smart Education Kit and a compact Smart City Handbook were developed. The greatest value should be placed on addressing the working and living reality of the target group and respecting their needs. Consideration should also be given to the great heterogeneity in terms of digital literacy within the European Union.
There is a huge deficit of digital skills in administrative teams, municipal participations and among urban actors dealing with citizen participation. This problem hinders the digital transformation of our cities in Europe, making it difficult to achieve the goals of the EU New Digital Era (EU Digital Compass). From a macro perspective, it will not be possible to achieve the sustainable transformation of local authorities as living and economic spaces according to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals if these digital skills and the understanding of what digitalisation can do for sustainability are not in place. Here, it is important to develop a low-threshold and EU-certified qualification that is specific to the target groups mentioned above. In this respect, it was important to develop a training approach that takes the target groups along on the basis of their needs and addresses individual needs in a modular way in order to break down barriers on the part of administrations.