Barcelona Digital Talent analyses the importance of digital professions in managing the Covid-19 crisis

• Digital professionals involved in Big Data, programming and infrastructure management have been required to boost their efforts to mitigate the impact of measures addressed to containing the coronavirus
• The greatest workload has come from adapting to remote work, managing the pandemic and from companies’ new needs
• The digital talent sector created 6,000 new jobs in Catalonia in the first few months of the pandemic

21 October, 2020

Barcelona, October 21^th, 2020. –Digital professionals have played a significant part in managing the coronavirus crisis. This conclusion emerged from the latest analysis by Barcelona Digital Talent, a public-private alliance promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona, Cercle Tecnològic de Catalunya, Barcelona Tech City, 22@Network, Foment del Treball Nacional, Barcelona Global, Barcelona City Hall and the Regional Government of Catalonia, with a view to making Barcelona the capital for digital talent.

Although Covid-19 has particularly affected the health sector, placed their infrastructures under strain and subject healthcare professionals to an unprecedented situation of stress, it has also influenced other sectors, which have been forced to react with little room for manoeuvre in order to help to combat the effects of the crisis. One of these sectors is the digital industry, which has seen in need an opportunity to continue growing. In recent months, the digital talent sector has created 6,000 new jobs in Catalonia.

Barcelona Digital Talent has identified three particularly noteworthy groups of digital activity in the initial months of containing the pandemic:

• The first of these is associated with the mass implementation of remote work. From one day to the next, many companies found themselves forced to implement telecommuting in order to keep some of their activity going. Under these circumstances, it was very important to make sure that companies’ entire communications networks were able to connect to employees’ servers at home, to manage this infrastructure and to solve any everyday technical problems that might arise outside the office.

This task has been carried out by networks and communications technical engineers, support technicians, service and network administrators, infrastructure managers and server managers.

• The second group is made up of professionals who focus on answering new needs that have arisen as a result of the pandemic. This group has sought to solve problems associated with the daily operations of companies, which may range from a shop setting up an e-commerce system or a restaurant requiring digital menus, to the creation of new apps (to manage office spaces, control entries and exits, etc.).

This group is made up of professionals such as specialist consultants, functional analysts and developers, programmers (particularly back-end), project managers and middleware architects (for any company that has been required to incorporate new software).

• The third and last group is associated with the management of pandemics. Technology has been used to perform different coronavirus-related research projects and to offer solutions using data. This period has seen great progress in data processing and treatment, in hospitals, in research and in mobility.

In this last group, 3D printing deserves a special mention. This technology has made it possible to offer hospitals useful alternatives in the production of officially endorsed medical material such as ventilators and face masks.

The profiles that have played a prominent role in this category are data and business intelligence analysts, Big Data architects, consultants and programmers, administrators of associated databases in Big Data environments and Big Data infrastructure administrators.