The Informatics Foundation of Turkey (TBV), which carries out important work towards the transformation into an information society, and software giant SAS, the world leader in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, have announced their cooperation within the scope of the "Digital Technology Developers" project with the slogan "Turkey Will Develop with its Digital Intelligence".

The world and economies are rapidly digitalizing and digitalization is deeply affecting the business world. Worldwide artificial intelligence revenue is expected to reach $36.8 billion by 2025, while the market for Internet of Things devices is expected to reach $26.7 billion this year and $75.4 billion in 2025. Smart cities are projected to create huge business opportunities with a market value of 1.5 trillion dollars in 2020. All these figures lead us to a single conclusion: Being competitive in the data-driven economy is important for national prosperity.

Development is possible with young people who will develop digital technology

According to the "Turkey on the Road to Digitalization" report recently published by the Digital Turkey Platform with the contributions of PwC Turkey, "The proportion of the young population between the ages of 20-24 who are not working, studying or receiving education is 33 percent in Turkey. If this rate is reduced to 9 percent, which is the level in Germany, an additional economic contribution of 64.7 billion dollars can be provided to the Turkish economy." These figures alone show the magnitude of the gains Turkey can achieve by investing more in this area.

The most important factor in order to have a strong position in competition with countries that have developed their economies with digital investments is to have a trained talent power that can be called digital intelligence. Overcoming the existing deficiency in this field is one of the most important issues to be solved for our country. With their cooperation, TBV and SAS will cooperate within the scope of the "Digital Technology Developers" project with the slogan "Turkey will develop with its Digital Intelligence" within the framework of a social responsibility approach.

TBV President Faruk Eczacıbaşı stated that they are pleased to add a new one to their collaborations with the main mission of supporting Turkey's transformation into an information society and added, "We will support the preparation for the new jobs that digital transformation will add to our lives with the projects we plan to realize with SAS until 2023 with the vision of training talents who will develop digital technology under the main headings of Data Science, Software Program Development, Cloud Computing and Young Talents. Efforts to train qualified human resources should be initiated without delay. It is very important that our work to be carried out together with universities, public and non-governmental organizations is effective and inclusive."

Tayfun Topkoç, General Manager for Turkey and Central Asia Regions of SAS, the world leader in analytics, said that they have been operating in Turkey for 22 years as SAS: "We provide data-based platforms and solutions to organizations and companies in Turkey at the first step of their digital transformation journey. We invest heavily in R&D and continuously innovate. We want to share the global vision and deep knowledge of SAS to contribute to the development of Turkey. Because we believe that in order for Turkey to become a more prosperous country and to stand out in the competition, we need to close the human deficit as soon as possible in the new professions that emerged with the development of technology, which are needed now and in the future. With TBV, we believe that in order to accelerate Turkey's digitalization process and ensure that it becomes a playmaker in the digital economy of the future, we need to train digital technology developers with competencies in areas such as data science, analytics, software and programming. In this context, with the "Digital Technology Developers" project we have launched together, we aim to bring the knowledge that SAS already shares with Turkey's important educational institutions, especially Boğaziçi and Sabancı universities, to more people."

In his speech, Hüseyin Sami Karaca, Director of Boğaziçi University Analytics and Insight Research Center, stated that institutions investing in data analytics have significant advantages in terms of growth rate and cost compared to their competitors. "As Boğaziçi University and the Analytics and Insight Research Center (AIM), we contribute to meeting the need for data science and analytical applications and developing innovative growth methods based on data through the studies and training programs we carry out in cooperation with SAS, which supports us with its technological infrastructure and experience," said Karaca.

Prof. Dr. Burçin Bozkaya, Director of Sabancı University Behavior Analytics and Visualization Laboratory, said that Sabancı University has initiated various training and research programs at different levels in order for Turkey to keep pace with the technological developments in the world and to raise a generation of data scientists who both produce and actively use the artificial intelligence methods and applications of the future. Bozkaya said, "SAS provides us with a great opportunity to successfully carry out these programs and train this workforce with the infrastructure and software applications it offers. Thanks to SAS support, the young minds we train graduate equipped to contribute to projects around the world and join the business world."

Who will be the Digital Technology Developers?
The project aims to reach university graduate professionals first. Newly graduated young people, those who have a few years of experience and want to improve themselves or those who want to make a career change will benefit from these trainings and will be able to step into a brand new and successful career journey. In parallel to this, the second target group is young people who are currently studying at university. Young people who are still at the beginning of their career journey will be able to take a step forward thanks to these trainings. Finally, reaching students in primary and secondary education institutions is also among the targets. Since it is necessary to prepare for the digital world of the future from a very early age, trainings for this group are of particular importance. It is predicted that children who develop their digital skills from the core will contribute more to the future of the country.

1000 Data Scientists in 1 year
Tayfun Topkoç, General Manager of SAS Turkey and Central Asia Regions, stated that they will provide trainings in lecture halls with the special curriculum developed by SAS in cooperation with Boğaziçi University and Sabancı University and continued his speech as follows: "We aim to train 1000 data scientists in the first year. In the later stages of the project, we plan to expand the scope of the project with trainings for different fields with TBV. In the second phase of the project, we plan to make the online training program, which has reached thousands of people in the US for many years, available in Turkey so that more people can benefit from these trainings. While spreading the project throughout Turkey with online trainings, we will not neglect to expand physical trainings as well. We want to include leading universities in 7 regions and reach a large number of young talents in 7 regions in order to carry the project, which started as a pilot in Istanbul, to Anatolian provinces. In this way, we will reach every part of Turkey and support equal opportunities in education. In the third phase of the project, we would like to target high schools and secondary education institutions, inform young people about the professions of the future, especially data scientists, and provide special introductory level trainings in the field of software."

50,000 data scientists and 100,000 young digital talent by 2023
The part of the project led by TBV, which is directly related to SAS, aims to reach more than 50,000 young people at the university level with both online and physical trainings in the field of data science in a 5-year period until 2023. Considering the whole project, which will contribute to 100,000 young people at the middle and high school level with trainer trainings, it is expected that hundreds of thousands of young digital intelligence will be brought to our country by contributing to the vision of "Digital Technology Developers" by many companies under the leadership of TBV.