More than 3,000 Londoners will be offered IT training
and management experience when the
Olympic Games visit the capital in
2012.
IT professionals who volunteer to help systems integrator
Atos Origin have a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to gain experience of a massive IT project, the
supplier said.
In the month before the games, the number of people working on
the Olympics' IT systems will rocket from about 50 people, all
permanent employees of Atos Origin, to 3,500.
Atos Origin expects to employ 500 people directly, with the
remaining 3,000 people unpaid volunteers from the local
community.
It is common for the principal technology supplier to major
sporting events, including last summer's
football World Cup in Germany, to rely on
volunteers to run systems.
Volunteers will work in the games' two datacentres, its 200-seat
operations centre, an integration testing lab and the stadiums
themselves.
Atos Origin London 2012 account director Rob Price said, "Any
volunteer could have a management role at a venue. Everyone has an
absolutely vital role to play in delivering business-critical
processes."
People will be asked to perform helpdesk roles, manage venues,
or ensure that information reaches key parties, such as the media,
at the right time.
Volunteers can expect extensive free-of-charge e-learning
programmes in the run-up to the games. At Athens in 2004, Atos
Origin ran 386 training courses over the three months immediately
before the Olympic Games.
Price said, "We are looking for a range of skills, from
professional conduct to a reasonably high level of IT literacy.
What is important is trust and professionalism. We use a knowledge
management system to recommend what to do when something goes
wrong."
The systems integrator has recorded what happened at Salt Lake
City 2002, Athens, and Torino 2006. Its knowledge management system
will be further improved by its experience running the next summer
games in Beijing in 2008 and the winter games in Vancouver
2010.
Atos Origin would prefer people with IT experience to volunteer,
but the UK's skills shortage is likely to mean it will have to
train people with no IT background.
Price said the five London borough councils where the games will
be held could provide basic IT training to disadvantaged people in
their communities to broaden the pool of potential IT
volunteers.
www.london2012.org/en/gettinginvolved/volunteering
www.atosorigin.com/en-us/Services/Industries/Major_Events/OlympiGames
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