The Directorate General for Vocational Training (Generalitat Valenciana) is the body within Spain's Valencian regional government responsible for the design and delivery of vocational training across the region's public education system. In 2023, the Directorate made a deliberate commitment to digitalization, recognizing that cloud computing and artificial intelligence were no longer emerging technologies on the horizon, but foundational competencies that students entering the workforce would need from day one.
With a clear strategic ambition but a small internal team, the Directorate needed more than a technology provider. They needed a partner who understood the realities of working inside a public institution — its timelines, its constraints, its responsibility to teachers and students — and who could help translate vision into a working, measurable roadmap.
They found that partner in EDT&Partners, introduced through the AWS Tech Alliance in 2023. Paco Mañó, Head of Digitalization for Vocational Training at the Directorate General, shares his experience of the collaboration.
A Strategic Bet on Emerging Technology
Paco Mañó: From the Directorate General for Vocational Training, we made a firm commitment to cloud technology starting around 2023, because we believed it was a key lever for transforming our education system. Cloud computing was one of the emerging technologies at the time, and we needed our students to be prepared. That is why we became one of the first educational institutions to join the AWS Tech Alliance. Through that framework, our contact at the Tech Alliance introduced us to EDT&Partners. We started our first conversations, explained what we needed, and quickly realized they were very well aligned with what we were looking for, and that they had a strong, genuine understanding of the education sector.
Finding a Partner That Understood the Institution
Paco Mañó: Our real need was specific: we needed to work with a partner that genuinely understood the complexity of working with a public institution. Public administration has its own timelines. The processes are sometimes complex, and there are many constraints that aren't always easy for an outside partner to navigate. What stood out about EDT&Partners from the very first moment was their capacity to listen. They empathized with us, with the specific challenges I personally faced working within this context. That was one of the main reasons we chose EDT&Partners over the other options we had.
From Ambition to a Working Roadmap
Paco Mañó: At the Directorate General, we were aware of the technological evolution happening in the business sector. We had several strategic challenges, above all around digitalization. Cloud was emerging, and artificial intelligence was following closely behind. We needed to define a clear roadmap, in an organized way, aligning the technology we wanted to implement in our vocational training programs. And we needed to make sure it would have a real impact in schools. It wasn't just about training teachers and leaving it there. The goal was to train teachers and then ensure they actually used those resources in the classroom.
EDT&Partners was completely aligned with those challenges. They also helped us connect our education system with the real needs of the business world, so that our students' digitalization would be aligned with what companies actually need. The ultimate goal was employability.
We are a small team within the Directorate General. Working through this autonomously would have been very difficult. The accompaniment that EDT&Partners provided from the beginning helped us move forward efficiently, and helped us translate our ambitions into realistic, concrete objectives.
Building Something Real, Together
Paco Mañó: When we started working on the landing zone for our cloud specialization program, we had quite a few challenges to resolve. EDT&Partners always offered solutions grounded in what we actually needed, very specific, very concrete. And when any of those solutions turned out to be more complex than expected, they didn't give up. They found an alternative.
One concrete example: at the end of each school year, all the student accounts created in the landing zone need to be closed. Managing over a hundred accounts individually was not a simple problem. We worked on a script to automate the process. Honestly, it didn't work at first. But EDT&Partners stayed with it. After a couple of months, they found a solution, so that now, at the start of each school year, we can open accounts, and at the end, we can close them systematically. That's a real example of what it means to have a partner who doesn't let a problem sit.
On artificial intelligence, one of our first challenges was helping teachers navigate the different AI models that Amazon made available to us. EDT&Partners took on the task of training our teaching staff, guiding them through what was available, what could be used, and how. We ran eight workshops that were very well received. They were so strong that we eventually opened them not just to teachers, but to students as well, so that students could hear directly from EDT&Partners professionals about what is happening in the real world.
Results Taking Shape, and What Comes Next
Paco Mañó: We started working with EDT&Partners last year, and that was a foundation-building year. This year, we are seeing real results. Twenty-two teachers are already using Lecture, EDT&Partners' open-source GenAI framework, as a working prototype inside their classrooms. Our vision is to open that framework to the entire educational community, either by the end of this academic year or at the start of next.
We were also pioneers in the Valencian Community with the cloud specialization program, and through this partnership, we built a landing zone where students can work in a genuinely real environment, the same type of environment they will encounter when they enter the workforce. What started in the 2024–25 academic year with 100 accounts across 4 centers has grown to 480 accounts across 19 centers in 2025–26, a scale of nearly 5x in a single year. The landing zone now supports three active projects: Proyecto LARA, Lecture, and Proyecto Invident — each running on the same shared infrastructure. And through the practical workshops EDT&Partners delivered, our teachers have learned a great deal. The feedback from our faculty has been extraordinary, because the workshops were designed so that teachers could take ideas from the session and apply them directly in the classroom the next day.
More Than a Partner
Paco Mañó: Working with EDT&Partners has been close and professional at the same time. The team they put in front of us were practically friends, and fully professional at the same time. I don't feel like they are an external provider. Many times, they feel like part of our own team at the Directorate General. I share my problems with them, they offer solutions, we look at things from different angles, and they genuinely care about what we need.
Many consultancies come from the technology world and apply standard solutions that simply don't fit the reality of schools or vocational training centers. With EDT&Partners, we didn't have that problem. They have a genuinely grounded understanding of education. And they also move in the business world, which allowed us to build that bridge between real-world industry and what we do in the classroom.
I have often felt that EDT&Partners wasn't really a consultancy at all. They have been a strategic ally. Their level of commitment has been extraordinary, precisely in that connection between education and industry that we needed most.
Would I recommend them? Without a doubt. I believe they are capable of accompanying you every step of the way, from your initial idea, through to real implementation and measurable success.
A Partnership Still in Motion
The partnership between EDT&Partners and the Directorate General for Vocational Training of the Generalitat Valenciana is a story of vision meeting execution inside a genuinely complex institutional environment. Over two years, a small team with an ambitious digitalization agenda moved from strategic ambition to working infrastructure: a cloud landing zone that grew from 100 to 480 accounts across 19 centers in a single academic year, twenty-two teachers piloting Lecture, EDT&Partners' open-source GenAI framework, in the classroom, eight workshops delivered across multiple formats for both teachers and students, and three active innovation projects running on shared infrastructure. What made the difference, in Paco Mañón's words, was not a generic playbook. It was a partner who listened, adapted, and stayed in it, from the first conversation to the classrooms where the work is still unfolding.
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