Why can’t Johnny compute?

The new programme is unusual in its ambition and scale – but it’s one of a growing number of efforts across Europe to boost digital literacy among the wider population. In Hungary, the government is collaborating with industry groups on an effort to provide IT training to 200,000. Similar public–private efforts are under way in Belgium, Germany, Britain, Luxembourg and France. And the European Commission has in the past year launched a series of initiatives, including standard-setting and market research, to promote digital literacy.

At present, it’s estimated, about 40 per cent of the EU population lack computer skills. And the European Information Technology Observatory, an industry research organisation, says that costs the European economy one percentage point of annual growth.  

Expanding digital literacy has been grasped by politicians as a way to boost Europe’s competitiveness in a globalised economy. At risk, says Carlos Zorrinho, coordinator of Portugal’s technology-development plan, is a “nightmare of exclusion valleys” – pockets of society that are cut out of services, benefits and jobs because they don’t know how to use a computer. And even in the more-fortunate areas, e-skills training must be increased for Europe to compete: “Globalisation needs more skilled citizenship,” he says.

Efforts to boost computer skills in Europe started getting more political attention as part of the so-called Lisbon Strategy, a wildly ambitious – and vaguely worded – development plan adopted at the peak of the dot.com bubble in early 2000, intended to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world by 2010. On the digital literacy portion of the strategy, the Commission in late 2007 issued a policy roadmap. Speaking by video at a meeting here on digital literacy, the European e-skills 2008 Conference, Commission Vice President Günther Verheugen said the Commission is now planning additional measures, including guidelines for school curricula, fiscal and financial incentives for training,  and monitoring supply and demand of ICT professionals.

Of course,  economic factors more than any political initiatives will probably prove more important for the evolution of digital literacy and of the IT jobs market. The conference happened in the shadow of the current stock-market collapse – with as-yet immeasurable impact on the economy in general and the ICT industry in particular. Jacob Kirkegaard, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think-tank, noted that unemployment among US computer programmers jumped from about 2 per cent to more than 7 per cent in the IT industry’s last slump from 2002–4.

Nevertheless, the approximately 150 EU, industry and educational officials who attended the meeting discussed several steps already taken:  

ICT Careers Portal.  An on-line Web site was launched at the conference, to act as a port-of-call for students interested in a career in computer or communications technologies. The pilot site, at eskills.eun.org, was initiated by an industry group called the e-Skills Industry Leadership Board and developed by European Schoolnet, a consortium of 31 ministries of education in Europe. It’s aimed at narrowing the chronic gap between supply and demand for ICT engineers – a gap recently projected at 70,000 a year in Europe through 2010.

European e-Competence Framework. A uniform way of defining  an ICT worker’s skills was unveiled by an industry group working with the European standards body, CEN. The Framework  is intended as a first step towards making it easier for employers to compare the ICT skills of job candidates, and thereby make it easier for engineers and technicians trained in one industry or country to move to another within Europe.

Harmonise. A study, called the Harmonise project, by a group of IT professional societies, identified 617 different types of professional certificates across Europe, provided by 62 certification suppliers. The Babel of certifications is viewed by the Commission as another barrier to easy mobility for IT professionals. The group’s recommendations included that the content of the different certification systems be made more transparent and aligned with the new e-Competence Framework.

Titan. A five-Hungarian programme called Titan has been launched to provide ICT training to 10,000 professionals, 25,000 small-business people and 200,000 citizens. The Hungarian programme, which involves the government, Hungarian Telekom, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, HP and others, is part of a broader continent-wide initiative called the European Alliance on Skills for Employability that aims to boost IT skills for 20 million people in Europe by 2010.