The project aims to address the skills gap of Smart Cities technicians and engineers, by designing and testing a vocational education and training program that is based on a novel and multi-disciplinary curriculum combining digital skills on Smart Cities enabling technologies, with soft, entrepreneurship and green skills.The expected project outputs are:• A Smart Cities competences map and ESCO-compliant Smart Cities job profiles.• A Smart Cities curriculum combining both technical and non-technical skills and competences and promoting personalized learning pathways.• Learning resources for Smart Cities enabling technologies and for building the soft, entrepreneurship and green skills of Smart Cities technicians and Engineers.• A diagnostic tool to identify personalized learning pathways.• A MOOC for Smart Cities enabling technologies.• Virtual Worlds for building the soft, green and entrepreneurship skills of Smart Cities technicians and engineers.The main project beneficiaries are Smart Cities technician and engineers either from the public sector (i.e. municipalities) or enterprises providing Smart Cities solutions, as well as HEI and VET students interested in Smart Cities. The curriculum will be tested through 4 national pilots in Greece, Bulgaria, Spain and Italy with at least 160 trainees. The certification of the skills and competences will follow a two-fold approach: (a) using micro-credentials to recognize the knowledge and skills gained through the successful completion of each online training module at the MOOC and Virtual Worlds and (b) designing the “Smart Cities Specialization Certification” that will be awarded to those passing online certifications exams with e-proctoring after the completion of the training modules.The project will create an ecosystem for the co-design and co-development of an innovative curriculum and technology-enhanced learning tools for the upskilling/reskilling of Smart Cities technicians and engineers.

<< Background >>One of the main barriers preventing the full exploitation of the Data Science and IoT potential, is the skills gap observed at both domains. According to the latest estimates, the number of data professionals in the EU reached €76 million in 2019 (3.6% of the total workforce), but there is still an imbalance between the demand and the supply of data skills in Europe. Moreover, 33% of enterprises declare that there is a major skills gap in IoT readiness.<< Objectives >>The skills gap together with the continuous evolution of Data Science and IoT technologies and their application at many sectors make the skills required by IT professionals sophisticated and the need to be constantly updated imperative. SEnDIng addresses the Data Science and IoT skills gap, by providing IT professionals with technical knowledge and skills together with transversal skills and competences that meet the industry needs are transferable and are recognized among EU countries.<< Implementation >>The main outputs of the project are: (a) 2 VET programs for Data Science and IoT that are based on multi-disciplinary and learning-outcomes oriented curricula , (b) 2 reference models of knowledge, skills and competences for Data Scientists and IoT professionals in accordance with well-known European frameworks, such as the e-CF and ESCO (c) a MOOC for Data Science, IoT and transversal skills and (d) 3 exploitation toolkits. The training material is available for downloading in the form of OERs.<< Results >>The 2 VET programs have been tested with IT professionals and companies from Greece, Bulgaria and Palestine in 3 phases: (a) 103 hours of Data Science or IoT asynchronous online courses, (b) 20 hours of online synchronous transversal skills training and 320 hours of work-based learning. At the end of the training all those who met the defined criteria participated in exams leading to SEnDIng Data Science and IoT certification. Moreover, 2 national workshops and 1 final conference were organized.