Our operational plan, published at the beginning of the year, set out Digital Jersey’s mission for the year quite succinctly – to drive economic development of the digital sector and innovation across all sectors through the adoption and diffusion of technology.
Reflecting on the past six months, it’s clear just how much we are doing to achieve that aim – all focused around three key areas: building a strong and growing technology sector in Jersey; fostering a thriving tech innovation ecosystem; and nurturing a highly skilled workforce that is ready to meet the demands of tomorrow.
What we’ve achieved is a reflection of our ambition to help Jersey’s tech sector thrive and our passion to drive Jersey forward, so the island is fit for a digital future.
And we can only do that thanks to the fantastic team at Digital Jersey, and by having such an engaged digital community in the island.
Industry, Innovation, Skills
In terms of supporting our industry, I’m delighted that we now have more than 200 corporate members – our highest ever number – many of whom I was pleased to see at our successful annual review event back in February and who are regular users of our Hub facilities.
More specifically, we’ve worked hard to enhance our framework for supporting start- and scale-up businesses. We’ve built on our previous Bootcamp initiative to replace it this year with a more tailored ‘Start and Scale Pathway’, to better suit the needs of innovators. The programme has seen a number of well attended Member Meet Ups, we’ve put innovators in touch with mentors, and we’ve introduced a select few businesses to our Accelerator stream, to supercharge their plans.
We’ve made some significant enhancements to the ProMatch platform, extending access so that it is now open to all sectors of Jersey’s economy, across the private, public and charity sectors. This can have a real impact in terms of local procurement and championing the use of local digital expertise – it’s a win-win for the local economy.
We’ve also supported high-quality digital relocations to the island – in the first half of the year, we’ve seen a record number of enquiries from tech entrepreneurs looking to establish a presence here. And the quality of those has been extremely high. Working with the Government, Locate Jersey and the regulators, we are in the enviable position of being able to attract some cutting-edge digital leaders – and the benefits of that are considerable, from boosting the digital skill set here, to diversifying our digital economy, to showcasing Jersey’s capabilities on the global stage.
A highlight of our innovation drive, meanwhile, has been the ongoing roll-out of Impact Jersey, designed to empower innovators to deliver cutting-edge digital solutions to solve real challenges in Jersey. As well as announcing the recipients of grants of the CareTech Challenge – Orchid Connect, Lifestyle and Good Boost – we also launched the CXTech programme aimed at boosting customer experience, productivity and efficiencies across Jersey’s economy.
We also participated in UK TechWeek in April, which enabled us to tap into a network of like-minded organisations from across the UK. Off the back of that, we now have regular conversations with counterparts from across the South-West of the UK, which is enabling us to discuss shared challenges and opportunities, and – significantly – providing a platform to talk about Jersey’s proposition as a digital sandbox.
And in terms of skills, a major achievement was hosting the first ever F1 in Schools scheme in secondary schools here. At an exciting Finals in March, teams from Victoria College and Beaulieu emerged as champions. Overall, the scheme saw around 100 secondary school students work in teams to design and race their very own small-scale F1 car. It brought home just how important STEM learning is to the development of our young people.
Looking forward
And there’s plenty more on the horizon.
We’re looking to continue to enhance our digital ecosystem and the support we offer local innovators – including further additions to the Start and Scale Programme.
In line with our aim to champion collaboration, we’ll be publishing our Agritech roadmap, working with local farmers to showcase the potential there is for our agriculture industry to embrace technology to increase yield and drive efficiencies.
We’ll be continuing to evolve Impact Jersey to make sure we are making it as accessible, flexible and tailored to the needs of innovators as possible.
With the application of AI so important to our future as a smart island, we will also be publishing an AI Playbook, designed as a framework to help embed AI at the centre of our future work across the island.
We’ll be building on the success of our Data Trust pilot scheme, Lifecycle, to support the real-world application to data trusts and data stewardship in Jersey, in new exciting ways – including through the development of the Jersey Data Exchange.
We’ll be extending F1 in Schools, building on the success for secondary school students to make it accessible to primary school children too.
In the spirit of collaboration, we’ll be working closely with Jersey Business to help deliver the digital skills elements of its Better Business grant scheme and boost productivity across the island, and with Government as part of its Digital Health Delivery Group and by inputting into the Competitiveness Review of Financial Services.
And of course we’ll be hosting what we anticipate will be our largest ever TechAwards in October – which this year include a new AI category.
So a lot to do – but it’s all rooted in the fundamental belief that we have the capacity, knowledge, brain power and ambition to always do things better here in Jersey. And we can do that by embedding a culture of innovation.
