IBM Corporate Service Corps in Bulgaria: Making a Difference

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IBM’s technology and talent have the power to help transform institutions, communities and the quality of life for people around the world.

Over the past 80 years since IBM has been present in the region of South East Europe, we have been trying to do the same. We have been working with governments, universities and different institutions from Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Serbia to support countries’ national agendas, improve education, revitalize cities, address the challenges of economic growth and many more.

Today I feel very proud to announce the beginning of the first ever IBM Corporate Service Corps initiative in Bulgaria which will support Bulgaria’s overall economic capabilities and competitiveness in areas such as sustainability, public health, economic and workforce development.

Created in 2008, IBM’s Corporate Service Corps program sends IBM’s top talent to developing countries all around the world to provide pro bono problem solving services to non-governmental, government and small business groups on issues that intersect business, technology and society.

During the one month IBM’s Corporate Service Corps pro bono consulting program, consisting of 12 IBM employees from 7 countries (New Zealand, Japan, India, China, USA, Brazil, Argentina), will come to Sofia and work with four institutions and organizations to help them develop strategy and improve business environment. The team of business and technology experts will explore the latest and the most effective methodologies for achieving those goals.

The initiative reflects our long term commitment to the local community. Corporate Service Corps provides governments, NGOs and other not-for-profit organizations with the renowned IBM and know-how we provide to commercial enterprises worldwide, and is dedicated to improving the success and quality of life of Bulgarian citizens.

In Bulgaria our employees will work on four key projects:

• Green Sofia, is a project of the Sofia Municipality aimed at improving the city’s efforts to successfully apply high standards for sustainable development and prepare Sofia’s candidacy for the European Green Capital Award organized by the European Commission. The IBM CSC team’s mission at Green Sofia will be to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Sofia as a green city, and to design a marketing and communication strategy, as well as strategic roadmap that will help Bulgaria’s capital leverage its green nature and beauty to differentiate.
• Project AirBG.info of Foundation Code: Bulgaria is a grassroots initiative made up of a group of concerned citizens connected by the idea of measuring and visualizing the environmental pollution in Sofia. The team is assembling and distributing free stations for measuring fine dust particles in the air. These stations are available to every citizen, and can be connected to his or her home or office wi-fi network, and thus transmit in real-time information about the air quality surrounding the station. The IBM CSC team will help AirBG with a detailed roadmap of how to further develop the project to achieve an user-friendly integrated automated system that can scale easily and make predictive analysis for decision making purposes.
• The Bulgarian Executive Agency for Transplantation (BEAT) is responsible for organizing and supervising all transplant activities in the country. The Agency maintains registries required for the purposes of donation and transplantation of organs, tissues and cells. It collects, processes and keeps information connected with the transplantation activities. The IBM CSC team will work on a data warehouse model and the base processes for data mining procedures to develop and implement a system for interactive analysis, fast processing of multi-dimensional analytical queries, and decision making.
• The Centre of Inclusive Education (CIE) promotes inclusive school environment as a quality standard in education. CIE strives to make education accessible to all. The main objective of the IBM CSC team is to design a business development and marketing plan that would allow the Center to diversify its sources of income and funding, strengthen its reputation, and build an efficient and viable marketing strategy.

By the end of 2017, IBM Corporate Service Corps will have dispatched approximately 3,500 IBM employees to nearly 40 countries — making this pro bono problem solving program one of the world’s largest.