MIICT

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

MiiCT will address the following specific objectives:

1. Objective 1: Co-design ICTs to assist in the integration of refugee and migrant populations through the provision of customised access to key public services:
2. Objective 2: Develop an adaptive ‘plug-and-play’ integration framework for the incorporation of new ICTs into existing public service infrastructure;
3. Objective 3: Prove migrant integration management by providing a job and skills matching decision support tool;
4. Objective 4: Deepen societal understanding of the factors that impact upon refugee and migrant populations’ ability to access key public services;
5. Objective 5: Introduce a repeatable and proven open consolidated methodology for co-designing ICTs for public sector service transformation;
6. Objective 6: Integrate, demonstrate and rigorously test a number of co-designed ICTs that streamline access to public services and ease the integration of refugee communities.

PROJECT PHASES

The project will take place in three broad phases; INSPIRATION, IDEATION and IMPLEMENTATION, within the wider concept of a human-centred design approach that aims to put the project’s implicated actors at the centre of the design and development process, unleashing the creativity of the consortiums multidisciplinary experts to deliver tangible, applied and innovative solutions. MIICT will be implemented across three primary pilot locations during the project; Cyprus, Spain and Italy, using different public services as use cases in each location.

• The INSPIRATION phase is concerned with eliciting understand of the community’s needs. This includes eliciting information around challenges faced from different groups independently. A variety of qualitative methods will be used, including questionnaires, focus groups and interviews;
• The IDEATION phase will conduct a series of co-design and co-creation sessions in each of the three pilot locations (CYPRUS, ITALY and SPAIN) to design and create solutions with the project’s stakeholder actors. Different approaches will be used such as Cognitive and Context Mapping and Storyboarding and paper-based prototypes will be developed;
• In the IMPLEMENTATION phase, the paper-based prototypes developed will be realised into fully functional live prototypes ready for testing and sustained pilot.

The development process will run iteratively throughout these phases to ensure improvement are integrated based on participant feedback. Through this methodology MIICT hopes to ingrain public authorities, public service providers, interest groups and migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers in the design of new systems that enable the more inclusive integration of migrants into the social and economic structures of host countries.

PROJECT OUTPUTS

MiiCT has three main outputs:

• ICT services: a set of ICT enabled services that will improve refugee and migrant populations’ access to key public services, including healthcare, welfare and employment;
• Integration Framework: an integration framework that will facilitate the seamless integration of heterogeneous services within the existing infrastructures of public services providing APIs for the ‘plug in and play’ of new ICT modules thus providing and supporting the long-term viability of the MIICT solutions;
• Bi-Lingual Web-based Platform: a bi-lingual web-based platform that consists of a database and intelligent analytics system that captures the specific socio-cultural, economic and legal contexts of migrants that is shared with public authorities. The platform will enable effect management of migrant’s’ integration into the EU labour market by providing means to better understand individual contexts, allowing individuals to seek opportunities for skills development and employment and enabling public authorities to automatically match their access to services such as education, welfare, employment and healthcare in host countries.

PROJECT IMPACTS

MiiCT overall expected project impacts are:

• Enhancing identification and inclusion of migrants;
• Facilitating the efforts of public administrations at EU, national and local levels to manage the integration of migrants;
• Facilitating communication with migrants and their access to services such as community language teaching, education, training, employment, welfare and healthcare systems within the host communities.

Members of the MiiCT Consortium are:  Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) – Centre of Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intellifence and Organised Crime Research (CENTRIC) (Project Coordinator), SYNYO GmbH, Center for Security Studies (KEMEA), Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Law and Internet Foundation (LIF), Advanced Integrated Technology Solutions & Services (ADITESS Ltd), Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) – Information Technologies Institute (ITI), AGENFOR International Foundation, EUROTHINK – Centre for European Strategies, Italian Ministry of Justice – Penitentiary Department – Triveneto Office (It-MoJ), Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies (FUNDEA), Center for the Study of Democracy, Koinonia Caritas Cyprus, Municipality of Engomi and ALDA – European Association for Local Democracy.