Digital Town Graphic

Advancing Digital Maturity: DCU Students Propose Ideas to Advance Digital Maturity in Gorey.

April 5, 2022

During the last 6 months various education outreach activities have been conducted as part of the Town of Things project. Students have been learning about the technologies used within the project and developing new ideas for Gorey.

 

Education outreach as an activity for the Town of Things project is a key activity. The aim of educational outreach within the project is to enhance student engagement with the project and allows for a better understanding of the data which is being collected by sensors around Gorey. The data collected through the sensors is publicly available through the Town of Things open data platform.

The initial events for the education outreach involve workshops for schools and universities students to learn all about the technologies used in the project and participating in hackathons such as Hack-A-Town.

The first of the education outreach activities involved students from DCU’s Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics (GDMBA) getting involved in the project. The students created a proposal, which was presented to Wexford County Council, to seek funding for a digital driven project that will support digital development in Gorey and will provide benefits to the residents of the town. Each of these proposals needed to advance, support, or promote one of the seven pillars of digital maturity.

What is digital maturity?

 

Digital maturity is the process of a company or town adapting and responding appropriately to their digital competitive environment and your aligned approach to understanding your customers, people, and processes. The company or town must adopt the right technologies to enable digital transformation.

Once you have established where your digital maturity is, you can determine where you are in your digital transformation journey. This will allow you to set short-term or long-term goals.

Digital Innovation Programme from the Department of Rural and Community Development there are seven pillars of digital maturity. Any project which is undertaken as part of the Digital Innovation Programme needs to advance at least one of the pillars of digital maturity.

The seven pillars are:

  • Digital Skills.
  • Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
  • Digital Economy & Employment.
  • Digital Services.
  • Community & Culture.
  • Digital Transition.

The Ideas

 

There were several interactive ideas presented to Wexford County Council, each idea that would advance at least one of the pillars of digital maturity as well as provide benefit to the Gorey and its residents. Each idea touched on an issue or problem which is currently being faced by the town. The ideas presented by each group from the GDMBA class would provide benefit to an area of Gorey to improve the public realm.

The ideas presented by the class were:

  • Play Gorey – Is centred around 5 play attractions in Gorey town which will connect six key streets in Gorey. The attractions are a digital playground, dance path, solar ping pong, digital activity arch and an outdoor theatre. Play Gorey seeks to bring together the diverse community to the public spaces of Gorey and to bring a gamified element to digital technologies.
  • Smart Park – Safe Park – Installing smart lighting in Gorey’s Park to reduce the amount of anti-social behaviour within the park. Along with the new lighting installed in the park, installing CCTV cameras will help to increase safety in the park.
  • Smart Water Usage – Developing an awareness and education campaign to increase awareness in Gorey to identify water saving opportunities. The campaign will include outreach programs to schools within the area and the installation of a smart kiosk to display trends in water usage in the town.
  • Kiosk Corridor – Introducing three kiosk’s and one smart locker in Gorey town. Each kiosk will provide a full catalogue of local retailer’s products. The smart locker units can allow user to collect their purchases made via the smart kiosks at a time that suits them. This is an easy way for locals and tourists to browse Gorey’s local shops.
  • The Green Lane – Creating one of Irelands first green lanes to provide benefit to locals and tourists. The lane will include the installation of a Smart Gym, a Gamer, a Walker and Bikeep.

Town of Things is a pathfinder project between Wexford County Council and the Irish Institute of Digital Business at Dublin City University to trial new technologies or innovate using existing technologies. The Town of Things project is an innovation project primarily funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development under the Digital Innovation Programme.