The Six Cities’ joint Digipore project developed new tools to address the shortage of skilled labour in the IT industry. The project organised coaching for employees returning to the industry based on the skill needs of companies and work trials of differing lengths for young people interested in entering the industry. The Digipore project was carried out in close cooperation with companies, and the project had over 300 participants.
Results of the Digipore project
- The City of Turku created a new operating model called Digipoint as part of the Digipore project. In Digipoint, jobseekers form teams who work on software development projects under an employment or apprenticeship relationship with the City. The model provides jobseekers the opportunity to update their skills to meet the needs of the labour market.
- In interviews, Digipoint participants named the accumulation of programming skills, project management skills and working life skills, among others, as the benefits of the model. The model also helped participants to better identify their own skills. The model’s cost benefits were calculated by KPMG.
- Digipoint became a permanent service of the City of Turku Employment Services Centre at the start of 2020 under a new name, CodePoint.
- The City of Tampere created the kokokansandigi.fi website as part of the project to spread general information about digitalisation. The website features online training material on digitalisation and digital terminology and a PDF summary. In addition to this, as part of the project training courses were organised in Tampere on topics such as e-commerce.
- In Oulu, the local Digipore subproject encouraged young people and those seeking to change careers to participate in IT industry training courses, organised continuing education and training in the field of IT and offered skilled jobseekers the opportunity to demonstrate their skills directly to partner companies. In addition to this, the project organised full stack and IoT architect coaching programmes.
- The City of Helsinki developed processes and operating models for supporting the jobseeking of young people as part of Digitalents Helsinki and Digitalents Academy. Participating young people developed their skills via practical work tasks, coaching and meetings with companies. In a follow-up survey, the participating young people praised several aspects, such as the work atmosphere, and were of the opinion that their programming skills had improved significantly. The deliverables of the City of Helsinki’s project were the Digipore career path model and the Työnhaun ABC (‘The ABCs of jobseeking’) guidelines.
- The City of Espoo developed the occupational skills of IT professionals with a coaching programme consisting of both programming training courses tailored to the needs of companies and practical work in companies.
- The City of Vantaa organised non-stop workshops on the basics of programming for unemployed young people. The workshops involved programming games, software, 3D worlds and robots, in addition to which they provided introductions to topics such as 3D-modelling.
- Just over 20% of the project participants were in an employment or apprenticeship relationship, while 17% were in education or training at the end of the project.
- The development of the project’s themes continues in the new Digipoint Six City Strategy project and the TyöAsema project in Oulu, among others.
The Digipore project was based on the need to reconcile the lifecycle of the digitalisation of working life with the lifecycle of people’s careers. The project modelled young people’s career paths to high-tech digital industries in collaboration with companies operating in the industry and cities’ development organisations. The project also involved determining companies’ needs and offering potential employees the opportunity to demonstrate their skills to partner companies. The project was coordinated by the City of Turku, with the other participants being the Cities of Espoo, Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere and Vantaa. The Digipore project ran from 1 September 2018 to 31 December 2019 and had a budget of EUR 1,103,229.
Further information
Tatu Moisio
Project Manager, City of Turku
tatu.moisio(at)turku.fi
Noora Orvasto
Project Manager, City of Turku
noora.orvasto(at)turku.fi