On Thursday 25th July, 2019 HRH Duke of Sussex visited Sheffield Hallam University to learn about the university’s commitment to applied research and addressing challenges in society.

The CENTRIC team were thrilled to be given the opportunity to meet the Duke and showcase our significant collaboration with UN Migration and the World Health Organisation on the SCAAN system. The team explained to the Duke how the system operates and gave a demonstration of how it would be used in the field.

SCAAN is a vital tool, currently being used in the field to help maintain staff security for both UN Migration and the World Health Organisation, if you would like to find out more watch this short film: SCAAN: Enhancing Staff Security

A team from CENTRIC met with members of the Protect Team at the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Cyber Crime Unit, to celebrate their successes at the recent National Cyber Awards and discuss continuing their award-winning collaboration. The ‘CYBER CENTRIC’ serious game that the two teams worked together to produce won two awards in April: Learning Innovation in Cyber Awareness and Most Original Cyber Security Product. The game beat more than 200 other nominees and was the only entry to be awarded two prizes. The game is being used throughout the region and beyond to encourage behavioural change in businesses in respect of cyber security. The innovative, educational game will be rolled out on a national level in early June. Keen to maintain momentum, the teams already have plans for further exciting work that combines academic excellence with professional expertise to turn research into reality and bring about positive change.

To find out more about the national cyber awards click here.

CENTRIC attended the EU Open Day at the European Commission’s Berlaymont building in Brussels on 4^th May 2019. The event was open to members of the public to showcase examples of projects that had received EU funding. CENTRIC demonstrated the AUGGMED project as part of the DG Migration and Home Affairs stand.

AUGGMED is a serious games platform which utilises innovations in modern technology including virtual reality, mixed reality, and artificial intelligence to provide a cooperative training platform. The platform is intended to enable police, security forces and counter-terrorist units as well as first responders to train their staff in different VR environments with different scenarios and apply this training in the real infrastructure environment using mixed reality techniques.

Find out more about the EU open day here.

The MIICT Project started on the 2nd of April 2019 a series of focus group sessions and interviews at three pilot locations as part of participants and stakeholders requirements elicitation.

• Spain: from the 2nd till the 4th of April 2019
• Cyprus: from the 10th till the 12th of April 2019
• Italy: from the 15th till the 17th of April 2019

In each country three types of stakeholders are targeted through the focus group sessions and interviews. The first are members of the migrant community, including refugees, to establish an understanding of the challenges they face interfacing with key public services. The second are public service providers to establish an understanding of the challenges they have experienced and observed while working with migrant and refugee communities and offering them key public services. The third and last are subject matter experts and representatives from other interest groups, such as NGO’s to elicit broader challenges associated with the integration of migrant and refugee communities, in particular those associated with access to key public services through the use of ICTs.

Participants are also invited to take part in workshops in their pilot country to co-design public service transformations using ICTs. Cognitive and context mapping are used to create mind-maps of abstract processes that relate to the experiences of participants. Based on this, initial storyboarding will be conducted to describe, on a step-by-step basis experiences, including frames that define problem areas where the project development can facilitate improvements and implement change.

The mentioned activities – focus groups, interviews and workshops – are aligned with the MIICT methodology, which wholly embodies a participatory design approach, encompassing the principles of co-design and co-creation into the core of the project. All aspects of the project follow a three-phased approach of Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation that take the challenges and ideas identified by engaging with the very audience they are designed for, empowering them to work alongside us to co-create and develop deep insights into new and improved services and giving them the agency to engage and pilot the developed ICTs in the INSPIRATION phase.

To find out more visit the MIICT website

The MIICT Project kicked off in Sheffield last month and the meeting was a huge success for everyone involved. The event involved many fascinating talks from migration experts, practitioners, developers and researchers from across Europe who all provided an excellent introduction to the project.

The MIICT project kick off conference – November 2018

MIICT (ICT Enabled Services for Migration) was conceived with the goal of designing, developing and deploying tools that address the challenge of migrant integration. In service of this goal, the project undertakes to co-create improved ICT-enabled services with migrants, refugees, public sector services, NGOs (Non-Governmental-Organisations) and other interest groups. By involving research-users at the centre of our approach we address the need to improve and customise the interfaces used to access key public services so that they better address the requirements of migrants and refugees. To achieve this MIICT has undertaken the development of a system to capture the specific socio-cultural, economic and legal contexts of migrants; information that can be shared with public authorities. In order to promote inclusion and reduce the potential for discrimination and bias, the system acts as a firewall, meaning only information pertinent to the specific task of the public authority is visible, removing elements such as gender, ethnicity and age in circumstances where they have no relevance, removing opportunities for discrimination and unconscious bias.

Previous research has established that issues of integration, discrimination, employment (and unemployment), incapacity support and education rank highly among migrants of varying demographics; including different age groups, genders, education levels and immigration status. Factors such as autonomy, perception, culture and history, as well as institutional constraints shape the dynamics and experiences of migrants and highlight the complexity of the migration process. This complexity is also said to indicate diversity in the migration and integration process as a result of the almost infinite combination of factors that may impact upon migrants’ experiences; influenced by the relationships between the economic, social, political and cultural factors that exist across a given juncture.

Using a co-design approach, MIICT will design, develop and deploy bespoke solutions that address; a) the management of migrant integration, b) the customisation of services to match migrants’ needs, and c) the need for sustained and improved inclusion of migrants. This evidence-based and inclusive software solution aims to improve labour market access, matching individuals with jobs and development opportunities based upon their specific and unique contexts.

MIICT is grounded in the principles of co- design. Through the participation of multi-disciplinary stakeholders MIICT will design, develop and deploy processes to ensure the identification of needs and requirements from both the perspectives of migrants, public sector services and NGOs. The collaboration of cross-disciplinary expertise from academia, industry and the private-sector in the development of digital-services will realise improved service delivery, demonstrated through a rigorous piloting and evaluation process conducted across the EU. MIICT aims to provide migrants and refugees with access to key public services, public agencies and NGOs with ICT enabled services and the necessary agency to take advantage of those services.

To find out more visit the MIICT website.