Barcelona City Council, through the Municipal Institute of Informatics (IMI) and the University and La Salle Private Foundation Campus Barcelona - Universitat Ramon Llull have signed an agreement to collaborate in research, innovation and dissemination of knowledge in the field of technology applied to urban management and the quality of life of citizens.
The agreement, signed today between the manager of IMI, Francisco Rodríguez and the general director of La Salle Campus Barcelona - URL, Josep M. Santos, is part of the priorities established in the Pla Barcelona Ciutat Digital which aims to turn Barcelona into a benchmark for the digital transformation of the public sector to improve the provision of services to citizens.
Thanks to this agreement La Salle will develop training activities in IMI mainly in the areas of Technologies applied to city management, hacker ethics or data science.
According to Gerardo Pisarello, first deputy mayor of Economy and Labour; Digital City and International Relations, this type of collaboration with the university brings multiple benefits for IMI. "It allows us to disseminate the way in which the public sector applies ICT, opens the door to attracting talent in the early stages of professional development and allows us to provide a simple and quality training in new technologies by municipal technicians," said Pisarello.
For his part, the General Manager of La Salle Campus Barcelona has highlighted "the importance of the transfer of knowledge between the university world and municipal action, two areas that must be in constant contact, especially in a city that is a pioneer in the application of technology to the daily lives of its citizens, such as Barcelona".
The actions foreseen in the agreement must take advantage of the synergies between the Town Hall and this academic centre and help to promote the values of solidarity, sustainability and efficiency among municipal workers, teachers and students. The collaboration between both parties will be carried out through academic, scientific and cultural activities such as:
- Participation in teaching,
- Research
- Shared tutoring of end-of-degree work, master's degrees and doctoral theses
- Internal seminars
- Projects
- Joint publication of papers and articles
- Public events
- Dissemination of activities
On the one hand, IMI will participate in conferences, master classes, lectures, round tables and other activities related to the thematic area of this agreement that La Salle will organize within his academic programs for teaching purposes; he will collaborate in the identification of urban challenges for students to solve within the framework of these educational programs, participating in the evaluation of the results obtained; will collaborate in the design, monitoring and evaluation of the final projects of the students in the undergraduate, master's and doctoral programmes; and will attend the guided visits of students and teachers to the SmartCities pilots deployed in the city of Barcelona.
On the other hand, La Salle will collaborate in formation activities for IMI workers on the themes determined by the Institute, which will have to be aligned with the themes taught to La Salle.
Thanks to this agreement La Salle will develop IMI formation activities mainly in the areas of:
- Technologies applied to city management or Smart Cities
- Smart Grids or Smart Grids
- Web Analytics
- Artificial intelligence for data science
- SEO and Web Analytics
- Hacking Ethics
- New generation Data Processing Centres or "3rd generation DPC"
- Evolution of the roles of Operation and Development towards the Devops culture