Anaeko is proud to support another year of Queen’s University Belfast Bright Future Collective higher education program. This program gives talented young people, who face additional barriers in life, the opportunity to fulfil their potential through higher education.

“The Pathway Opportunity Programme has made a huge difference to hundreds of talented young people, who are least likely to attend higher education, because of their background. For many of these students, living expenses can become the major barrier to their success.

“I am delighted to launch the Bright Future Collective and we are looking forward to engaging with many more local businesses as we progress with the initiative. The contribution of the Collective will help us to create life changing opportunities for determined young students. The initiative is a shining example of what can be achieved when industry and higher education work together for the economic benefit of the region and beyond – the benefits to wider society are immeasurable.”
Professor Ian Greer, Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast

For a week, beginning 22nd to 26th July 2024, sixth form students joined Queen’s for the final leg of their ‘Pathway Opportunity Summer School Programme’. This is a university wide, outreach initiative, with students recruited by the Widening Participation Unit. Students with no family history of university but who have been identified by their schools as bright and motivated, are encouraged to apply. This year, over two hundred students joined a diverse range of programmes, from chemical engineering, computer science to health and medicine, to law and psychology.

The programme started in February 2024 when students visit Queen’s for an induction day and an afternoon of teaching. They return to their school studies while simultaneously undertaking their online university studies. They join us for a full teaching day in April and the highlight of the programme is the July summer school week. They live in Elms student village during the week and there is a full social calendar in the evenings.

As a partner of the programme Anaeko got the opportunity to attend the Pathway Summer Scheme employer day on Wednesday 24th July for the Computer Science Summer School with the chance to meet the students and a day packed with workshops and panel discussions. As a member of the Bright Future Collective Anaeko give a gift to the Pathway Opportunity Programme Bursary Fund. Allowing Queens to provide bursaries to students who may have thought university was out of reach.

Translink teamed up with Anaeko for this year’s ‘Generation Innovation’ work experience programme to challenge young people to come up with a data-driven solution to enhance active travel across Northern Ireland.

(Photo: Generation Innovation held in Belfast)

Generation Innovation, a programme run by Catalyst, is a future-focused one-week real world work experience programme for 17 to 18-year-olds, designed to empower, enable, and upskill young people for the workplace of tomorrow.

Workshops delivered by expert facilitators covered topics from design thinking and user-centred design to communication, problem solving and presentation skills.

Generation Innovation gives young people a real-world working experience to put Design Thinking into practice by solving a company set challenge from Translink’s RailVISTA – the transport operator’s team focused on digital inclusion and data-driven solutions.

The eight participating students from schools across the region were asked: “As a team, how can you use a data engineering solution to enhance active travel in Northern Ireland, making it easier and more appealing to combine walking, cycling, and public transport?”

Their solution was an all-inclusive app combining information such as real-time schedules, travel routes and special event travel, all in one place, with new features such as reward schemes and gamification to give customers incentives to walk or cycle to stations.

“By building points with every step they can earn free offers with local cafes or coffee shops or reduced-price public transport tickets,” explained the students.

The Generation Innovation student team which presented its ideas to a panel comprising of representatives from Translink, Anaeko and SISCOG added: “A connected and real-time app allows customers to benefit from enhanced features but also gives transport and infrastructure companies insight into travel movements and customer preferences allowing them to either reduce or increase stations in certain areas or improve facilities such as bike shelters at stations or areas for bike parking on trains.”

(Photo: Lyndsay Orr, Programme Manager for Translink’s RailVISTA)

Lyndsay Orr, Programme Manager for Translink’s RailVISTA, said: “A key part of the Translink strategy is ‘Go Healthy’ whereby we promote public transport alongside active travel. Translink tasked Anaeko to provide a data-driven solution to enhance active travel across Northern Ireland alongside our public transport provisions. This includes leveraging data engineering techniques to analyse travel patterns, optimise route planning, and integrate real-time data to improve the overall efficiency and appeal of active travel options in conjunction with public transport.

“The students presented some exciting and innovative ideas and we are excited to see how we can move these forward as well as get more young people involved as one large focus group to enhance services for passengers.”

(Photo: Students Rachel Douglas and Sara Craig)

Colm Hayden, CEO at Anaeko, said: “Anaeko is an innovative, collaborative, people-centric data engineering company on a mission to deliver environmental and social benefit from timely access to quality data.

“Capturing student opinions from diverse backgrounds through Generation Innovation helps Anaeko and our RailVISTA delivery partner SISCOG design solutions that are digital inclusive. In doing so we ensure everyone can access and benefit from digitally inclusive solutions we deliver for Translink.”

The presentation took place at Anaeko premises in Weaver Court, next to the new Belfast Grand Central Station.

About RailVISTA
RailVISTA is a project for the development of a decision support system to define train timetables, plan and allocate rail fleet and train crew, and manage Translink’s daily operation. The system is designed and implemented by SISCOG, in partnership with Anaeko for solution hosting, integration and data migration.

Anaeko is an ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified company operating since 2004 in North America and Europe. We deliver secure, scalable and reliable data optimisation services to Large Enterprises, Technology Innovators and Research Agencies in highly regulated industries across the public and private sector.

Road Transport Expo 2024 | NAEC Stoneleigh 4-6 June

In the transport industry, we’re engaging with vehicle manufacturers, telematics companies and both public and private sector transport operators. There is the necessity for sustainability, driven by regulatory compliance, but we also look at the business advantage it offers in terms of efficiency, safety and customer satisfaction. Our expertise ensures tailored solutions that drive efficiency, innovation, and growth.

Where to start with your Transport Data? It all begins with understanding the quality and availability of information. Through a discovery process, we assess third-party systems like telematics, fuel, and tachographs to determine the accuracy and real-time nature of the data.

Resilience and security are paramount, especially if sharing information externally. We ensure sensitive data such as driver information and vehicle identification numbers are redacted to maintain confidentiality.

Our approach is iterative, involving ideation, prototyping, and delivering incremental reports. Clients typically start with areas like safety, fuel efficiency, emissions reduction, and overall sustainability goals before progressing to capacity planning, route optimisation, and vehicle replacement strategies.

This journey towards sustainability is unique to each business, but the fundamental concepts remain consistent. We’re here to assist companies in navigating this process, recognising that it’s not just an environmental endeavor but also a strategic business decision.

In the ever-evolving transport landscape, data is the driving force. Anaeko are predicting maintenance needs, planning EV strategies, meeting CSRD ESG requirements, and elevating customer experiences. If you’re considering embarking on a Data Discovery journey and need assistance, Anaeko is here to help you get started.

We are exhibiting at Road Transport Expo 2024 visit stand N35a to discuss how we can support your data and sustainability goals.

Anaeko is an ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified company operating since 2004 in North America and Europe. We deliver secure, scalable and reliable data optimisation services to Large Enterprises, Technology Innovators and Research Agencies in highly regulated industries across the public and private sector.

Multimodal 2024 | NEC Birmingham 11-13 June

In the transport industry, we’re engaging with vehicle manufacturers, telematics companies and both public and private sector transport operators. There is the necessity for sustainability, driven by regulatory compliance, but we also look at the business advantage it offers in terms of efficiency, safety and customer satisfaction. Our expertise ensures tailored solutions that drive efficiency, innovation, and growth.

Where to start with your Transport Data? It all begins with understanding the quality and availability of information. Through a discovery process, we assess third-party systems like telematics, fuel, and tachographs to determine the accuracy and real-time nature of the data.

Resilience and security are paramount, especially if sharing information externally. We ensure sensitive data such as driver information and vehicle identification numbers are redacted to maintain confidentiality.

Our approach is iterative, involving ideation, prototyping, and delivering incremental reports. Clients typically start with areas like safety, fuel efficiency, emissions reduction, and overall sustainability goals before progressing to capacity planning, route optimisation, and vehicle replacement strategies.

This journey towards sustainability is unique to each business, but the fundamental concepts remain consistent. We’re here to assist companies in navigating this process, recognising that it’s not just an environmental endeavor but also a strategic business decision.

If you’re considering embarking on a Data Discovery journey and need assistance, Anaeko is here to help you get started.

We are exhibiting at Multimodal 2024 visit stand 1025 to discuss how we can support your data and sustainability goals.

Anaeko are pleased to announce we have achieved AWS Select Tier Partner status and have become an AWS Public Sector Partner. This marks a significant step in our journey as a leading Data and Analytics company leveraging our partnership with AWS to offer innovative solutions to our customers in both public and private sectors.

We have had a lot of support from the AWS partner team and our distribution partner Ingram Micro and would like to thank them for helping us along this journey.

The partner tier status recognises our technical competency and our delivery expertise to our clients. We look forward to continuing to build on this and grow in partnership with AWS and Ingram.

Generation Innovation aims to inform, upskill and empower the young people of the current generation to thrive as the next leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs of the future. And Anaeko is proud to support this event founded by Catalyst by offering resources for their work experience programme 2024.

The initiative energises the imaginations and aspirations of young people in Northern Ireland by increasing their knowledge of skills and awareness of future careers in innovation. The ethos of the program believes that young people are central to unlocking Northern Ireland’s future as a globally renowned knowledge economy. That’s why we put them at the heart of our inspirational community of entrepreneurs, companies and education leaders.

The work experience programme is for ambitious 17–18-year-olds interested in up-skilling for the jobs of the future. Students receive Design Thinking training over the course of five days, learning how to work as part of a new team made up of students from across Northern Ireland. The new skills are then put to the test by solving a company challenge by developing a solution, before pitching it to the partner company and their fellow students.

Generation Innovation kicked off this year with a company training day for the Generation Innovation Work Experience Programme in the new Ulster University Belfast campus.

This training day allowed partner companies to join together and build out their Design Challenges that will be proposed to the students during the Generation Innovation Week.

Anaeko’s Challenge Statement for Generation Innovation Week

How might we come up with a solution that can bridge the digital skills gap across age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds to drive inclusive growth and maintain economic competitiveness in Northern Ireland?

Anaeko is a Northern Irish Data Engineering company on a mission to deliver environmental and societal benefit through timely access to quality data. Fostering inclusivity within projects and partnerships is one way that Anaeko can deliver societal benefit.

At Anaeko, we endeavour to undertake projects that facilitate digital inclusion, ensuring that everyone can access and benefit from digital technologies. However, according to a November 2023 report by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), nearly one in five individuals in Northern Ireland lack digital skills, defined as not having engaged in various online activities such as using online services, finding information, communicating, and practicing internet safety. While 44 percent possess above-basic digital skills and 38 percent have basic skills, significant discrepancies exist across age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Despite Northern Ireland surpassing the Republic of Ireland and the EU in basic ICT skills with 81.3 percent proficiency, challenges persist due to an aging population, lower productivity rates compared to the UK and Ireland, and gender disparities in digital skill distribution. Closing these gaps is crucial for maintaining economic competitiveness.

We look forward to working with the young people during Generation Innovation Week to explore and see what solutions they create against this design challenge.