Even though educational offerings on open data are available we strongly believe there is a need for: a) an occupational profile that is focusing on smart cities' open data at the European level b) a systematic curriculum able to cover all different aspects of an Open Data City Officer - OpenDCO. The above two factors constitute the main contribution of this project which is considered quite important taking into account the impact open data may have on the economic growth of the European Cities. Up to now, little emphasis has been given to the way smart cities/municipalities are organized to decide upon such issues and even less on training the personnel on the new skills required. Smart cities development was mainly considered as a technological problem. However, today smart cities are viewed as ecosystems and an important aspect for their development is the availability of well trained, educated and qualified personnel. These profiles are smart city planner, smart city IT head and smart city IT expert. Smart cities staff need need to constantly keep upgrading their knowledge and skills in the development and exploitation of open data leading to the need for a new job profile named “Open Data City Officer - OpenDCO”.
The motivation to apply for the project is the understanding that Smart Cities (SC) are producing a high volume of data, originating from the urban environment, the use of public services, traffic noise levels, population projections among many others. More recently there is a growing global trend for systematically studying and opening data. The European Commission is supporting open data initiatives through https://data.europe.eu where the total number of 27160 different datasets are available under the category “regions and cities”. These datasets are referring to a variety of issues (e.g. Parking slots, election results, quality of life, environment). At the skills development level, several organizations, HEIs and VET providers are offering courses and eLearning resources on open data development and exploitation. For example, data.europe.eu is offering a large number of open data eLearning modules. Similarly, USA federal CDO council in its strategy is defining the Federal Chief Data Officer position. There is a great scope for more focused training and dissemination activities on open data for people in the sector proven by the interest from participants in the pilot testing and the dissemination activities.