Digital Business

This pillar focuses on four key objectives:

• Support SMEs to tap into the digital economy.

• Utilise digital technology to promote Digital Tourism in Fingal.

• Facilitate the development of digital hubs and co- working spaces for entrepreneurs.

• Support and encourage Smart City region development.

Fingal is home to a diverse range of employers varying in scale from large multi-nationals to indigenous small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and small local business start-ups with a steady rise in the number of businesses created in the county.

In Fingal, 98% of businesses are classified as SMEs, employing 109,000 people, that are mostly made up of companies employing 10 or fewer staff.

The Fingal Economic & Community Monitor indicates that over 21% of the industry located in Fingal relates to the ICT sector.

Objective: Support SMEs to tap into the digital economy

Where we are now

Local Enterprise Office (LEO) Fingal is situated within Fingal County Council and is part of a nationwide network of 31 LEOs.

The LEO is the first-stop shop for enterprise supports in the county, providing a range of business support services aimed at cultivating entrepreneurship, to stimulating growth and creating employment in start-ups and small businesses.

LEO Fingal has reported a significant increase in the demand for Trading Online Vouchers (TOV) applications, from small businesses planning to invest in their online sales platform.

61 Fingal businesses were awarded €132,000 worth of TOV grants in 2019.

Reflecting the objectives of Future Jobs Ireland 2019, the Local Enterprise Office has identified digitalisation and technological change as one of the key areas in which future programmes will be developed and implemented.

The impact of digitalisation is advancing in new and unanticipated ways.

LEO Fingal will collaborate with other state agencies and organisations to incentivise SMEs to invest in new technologies and will aim to increase the capacity of SMEs to engage in research, development and innovation.

What we aim to achieve

The development of Digital Strategy for Fingal aims to support SMEs to grow their digital businesses, drive employment opportunities across Fingal and promote Fingal as the place of choice to grow your business.

This Strategy aims to further promote digital opportunities, digital skills training and dedicated funding streams to support local businesses to reap the rewards of the digital economy.

We will also look to facilitate the development of digital signage on the High Street and at tourist attractions for wayfinding, news, events and promote local businesses.

Objective: Utilise digital technology to promote Tourism in Fingal

Where we are now

Tourism is an important indigenous sector of the Fingal local economy generating income and employment.

Visitors to Fingal generate a €500 million spend, which sustains a total of 20,000 jobs (one in four jobs in Fingal) across all sectors (transport, retail, entertainment and other services).

Tourism in the county is heavily dependent on:

• day trip visitors, particularly to coastal locations and heritage attractions;

• stay-over visits, largely concentrated around Dublin Airport.

A core objective of the Fingal Tourism Strategy is to optimise and expand the existing visitor experience.

Fingal County Council works closely with Fáilte Ireland in this regard.

What we aim to achieve

The strategy will seek to develop digital technology to support and enhance tourism in Fingal.

Digital technologies can enhance the visitor experience and can improve accessibility for people who don’t use English as a first language, people that have hearing or sight impairment and people with decreased mobility.

By taking advantage of appropriate digital technologies to improve the tourism offering in Fingal, it is envisaged that further economic opportunities for the tourism sector can be delivered.

Technology advancements in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are opening tourist attractions to a new medium of experiences and where appropriate should be utilised in the tourism sector.

Improved visitor access to these technologies can be achieved by providing public free Wi-Fi.

Fingal County Council will work with Fáilte Ireland on its Orientation Strategy for the Dublin Region to develop innovative and accessible digital solutions that integrates all visitor orientation and information and is available across all visitor touchpoints.

Objective: Facilitate the development of digital hubs and co-working spaces for entrepreneurs

Where we are now

Fingal has established three Enterprise Centres around the County – Drinan in Swords, BASE in Mulhuddart and BEaT in Balbriggan - providing industrial and office units and standard services.

These Enterprises Centres have a history of providing support, networking opportunities, business development support and links to enterprise support agencies, Third Level institutions and Research and Development (R&D) opportunities to start-ups and micro-enterprises.

All three Enterprise Centres show high levels of occupancy, ranging from 88% to 97% and currently support 69 businesses and 342 jobs.

This Strategy aims to increase the availability of co-working and digital hub facilities to enable more entrepreneurs to grow their businesses in Fingal.

What we aim to achieve

Fingal has over 28,000 workers commuting into Dublin City.

Data analysis further indicates that the majority of Fingal’s citizens travel outside the county to work.

With the economy in recovery, more of the county’s population is in employment and commuting to work, leading to congestion and long commute times with affordable accommodation increasingly being pushed out to the fringes of Dublin and its environs.

This compounds congestion and commuter issues thereby damaging Ireland’s attractiveness to foreign investment.

In the Digital Strategy Survey, we asked what supports or services would business and residents like to see developed in Fingal.

8.5% of the respondents wanted to see Digital Hubs and co-working spaces developed in the region.

This Strategy will seek to facilitate the development of flexible co-working spaces and digital hubs that would provide vital supports to entrepreneurs and support the local economy by enabling more workers to work and live in their local communities.

Objective: Support and encourage smart city region development

Where we are now

In 2016 Smart Dublin,21 an initiative of the four Dublin Local Authorities, was established to engage with smart technology providers, researchers and citizens to solve challenges and improve city region life.

The core aim of Smart Dublin is to position Dublin as a world leader in the development of new urban solutions, using open data, and with the city region as a test bed.

Smart Dublin has identified mobility, environment, energy, waste and emergency management as priority challenges.

As a founding member of the Smart Dublin initiative in 2016, Fingal County Council has actively sought to capitalise on the abundance of opportunities presented by the global Smart Cities movement for both internal digital transformation and to stimulate economic vibrancy in the region.

To date, the Fingal County Council Smart Dublin Team have led on the delivery of a host of Smart City region projects, including three SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Challenges in partnership with Enterprise Ireland – Illegal Dumping, Wayfinding and Unheard Voices.

Engagement in the SBIR programme has embedded Smart Cities expertise within the local authority, while also supporting innovative, small businesses to develop and trial Smart solutions within a local authority context.

What we aim to achieve

Complementing the development of co-working spaces and digital hubs, Fingal will also aim to develop a Smart Dublin District within the county.

Building on the success of Fingal’s leadership role in the Smart Dublin programme to date, we will examine options to develop a Smart District that will seek to transform how we address the key urban and rural challenges of our time such as environmental sustainability, connectivity, and the future of mobility.

The unique value of the proposed Fingal Smart Dublin District lies in its application of the Quadruple Helix Model of Open Innovation (OI 2.0).

Bringing together public sector, industry, academia and civil society, the Smart Dublin District will act as an honest broker between partners, whilst facilitating the testing of solutions within live urban and rural settings within Fingal.

As a key priority of the European Commission’s Digital Single Market policy, the application of OI 2.0 will allow for multidisciplinary perspectives to work together in the co-creation of Smart Cities solutions.

As part of the wider Smart Dublin eco-system, the district will benefit from expertise and relationships built within the Smart City Region community across the Dublin region including access to research communities and practical support from the Smart Dublin regional office.

The district will also be able to access expertise and knowledge through engagement with the All-Ireland Smart Cities Forum.

The District will showcase the latest Smart technologies such as open data platforms, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning and the Internet of Things.

The Smart Dublin District will further support future SBIR Challenges and will foster start-ups and SMEs to bring products to market.

PRIORITY DELIVERABLES

 

Pillar	Digital Business
Vision	To make Fingal the best place to start and grow a business
Objective	Support SMEs to tap into the digital economy
Action	Description	Lead Partner	Contributors	Status	KPI
3.1	Support SMEs to enhance their online trading presence, through the Trading Online Voucher Scheme (TOVS).	FCC	LEO	Ongoing	Increase take up of TOVS.
3.2	Facilitate the development of Digital Signage on the high street and at tourist attractions for wayfinding, news, events, and promote local businesses.	FCC		2022	Expansion of Smart Street Furniture pilot.
3.3	Provide Digital Marketing Clinics, social media and digital skills training for SMEs.	FCC	PPN	Ongoing	Increase skills training to SMEs.
3.4	Develop and roll out an initiative focused on incentivising and enabling SMEs to become more competitive and productive through the adoption of innovation and new technologies.	FCC	LEO	2022	Increase innovation and technology use in SMEs
Objective	Utilise digital technology to promote Tourism in Fingal
Action	Description	Lead Partner	Contributors	Status	KPI
3.5	Use digital technologies to improve the tourism offering in Fingal.	FCC/ Fáilte Ireland	Operators of FCC Heritage Properties		No of apps, audio guides, VR/AR experiences at tourist destinations.
Objective	Facilitate the development of digital hubs and co-working spaces for entrepreneurs
Action	Description	Lead Partner	Contributors	Status	KPI
3.6	Facilitate the development of digital hubs and co- working spaces in Fingal.	FCC		2020 - 2023	Number of co- workings desks, indirect and direct jobs created. Sustainability of digital hub/co- working spaces.

 

 

Objective	Support and encourage smart city development
Action	Description	Lead Partner	Contributors	Status	KPI
3.7	Facilitate the development	FCC	Smart Dublin	2020 -	Development of
of a Smart Dublin District in Fingal.			2023	a Smart Dublin District in Fingal.
3.8	Continue to work with	FCC	Smart Dublin	2020 -	Participate in SBIR
	Smart Dublin to deliver			2023	Challenges and
	Smart City projects to solve				Smart City Research
	challenges in Fingal and the wider Dublin region.				& Projects.