#3 International Advisory Board
Representatives of EDDIE Project – „EDucation for Digitalization of Energy“, the Partners involved in the strategic implementation, important members and the external experts, participated and actively contributed at the 3rd International Advisory Board (IAB) of the Project which took place in the Online Environment. This important meeting was organized by the project coordinator COMILLAS Pontifical University, on Thursday, 25th of November 2021. The role of Education in the Digital Era for Digitalization will create the framework for EDDIE Project to take part in the decision-making process of Digitalization of the European Energy Sector (DEES).
The 3rd International Advisory Board Meeting highlighted interesting and significant topics for the development of the project, the feedback, dissemination and stakeholders’ campaign, best practices in education for Vocational Education and Training (VET), university and continuous learning, blueprint strategy and latest actions on stakeholders mapping. Dissemination activities within EDDIE Project which includes social media interactions, exploitation of the results, various actions on EDDIE’s website were addressed in the 3rd IAB meeting. Within the dissemination activities, EDDIE consortium started a new topic on its website addressing relevant policy briefs for the Digitalization of the Energy Sector. The main objective consists in informing the interested audience about critical subjects regarding Energy, Digitalization, Skills and Competences in terms of new strategies, regulations and directives at EU level.
Additionally, the 3rd IAB Meeting underlined the Quality Assessment Report for the First Analysis of the Survey submitted to all IAB members. A 2nd quality assessment report will be conducted in the shape of another survey. In this context, EDDIE project aims to improve education and training in the new era of the digitalization of the energy system and complements its strategy based on IAB members’ feedback.
Furthermore, in terms of the latest actions on stakeholders mapping, one of the activities developed during the last few months is the technical improvement of the current Data Base, with the support of NTT Data as a member of the EDDIE Consortium. In the context of best practices in education sector, within the Work Package (WP) 4, EDDIE Representatives are focusing on the submission of three deliverables which are due in December 2021. These deliverables are related to the analysis and identification of the best practices in VET, Universities and Lifelong Learning – different types of training/educational providers. A specific line of work, relevant for all the deliverables, is finding common definitions and criteria for the concept of best practice.
The feedback from the IAB members was positive with comments on the work that has been done and the strategy of EDDIE towards the right direction. Remarks were made on the importance of upskilling and reskilling in all sectors and for the energy sector at the transition. One of the challenges of this project is to include all profiles of stakeholders (with all the differences) as VET institutions, Universities, technicians, top managers, students, etc. Channels to reach them are different, as well as their interests. The status of the project and the progress of the work was underlined by DAFNI, especially with respect to the skills demand and the skills gaps. One point to stress is the geographical dimension (rural‐ mountain‐ islands) in terms of markets and education.
The International Advisory Board plays a key role as an independent external quality consultant in the project, and it is providing requirements and inputs on goals and issues, monitoring project milestones, and supporting with final feedback on results and future expectations in other sectors and other blueprints. Quality assessments are performed throughout the entire implementation period together with project progress reports. Members of the IAB are important stakeholders from the European Energy sector as follows: EUROGAS; DERlab – European Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories; FSR – Florence School of Regulation; T&D Europe; CESI – European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions; The City of Aachen; DAFNI Network; City of Herne; ENTSO.E – European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity and ItalGas.
EDDIE Consortium
