Nicosia Development Agency ANEL is the project partner from Cyprus. It was established in 2011 by the Municipalities of Greater Nicosia. Every activity of the Agency aims at the implementation of developmental policies, practices and actions, through its member municipalities, for the achievement of the best quality of the citizen’s lives in all sectors in its area of intervention.
Nicosia Development Agency operates as a consulting body for its member local authorities. In this framework, it designs and provides different kinds of training activities to strengthen the capacities of the staff and elected representatives of its members. In addition, in cooperation with the local authorities and governmental institutions, it provides educational and training activities to the citizens in many sectors.
Building up on the project’s actions “Identification of competencies and job role profiles of Smart Cities DevOps professionals” and “Design and delivery of VET curricula combining digital and transferable skills, including a MOOC, open educational resources (OERs), e-learning, face-to-face training and work based experience”, ANEL will pilot the training in Cyprus in its 9 member-municipalities in order to evaluate the experience. The same pilot actions will also be applied, in parallel, in Germany, Greece and Italy so that the evaluation results will be assessed on a common framework.
This initiative falls in line with the needs identified and the actions proposed through the “National Training and Capacity Building Strategy for the Local Authorities of Cyprus” elaborated by the Ministry of Interior, in cooperation with the Centre of Expertise for the Local Government Reform of the Council of Europe, the Union of Cyprus Municipalities, the Union of Cyprus Communities and the technical support of ANEL’s staff.
ANEL brings to the project the ground for the new methods and tools to be tested on real environment and assessed in order to be checked and get their finalised edition. The innovative methods and tools will be then available to transfer and use in other regions by any interested parties. At the same time, through the project, ANEL has the opportunity to put in practice the project’s outcomes that would enforce and strengthen the human resource abilities of its member municipalities in the area of Nicosia district in Cyprus.
