1. Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition
Future of digital skills in Europe: reskilling and upskilling
through partnerships
Christine Simon
European Commission, DG Connect
Big Data Skills Accreditation Workshop
17th September 2020

2. ▪ The Digital Skills and Jobs
Coalition - a unique community
supported by the European
Commission since 2016;
▪ Working to reduce the digital
skills gap in Europe;
▪ A platform of exchange and
learning to showcase actions and
initiatives as well as their impact.
The Coalition

3. ▪ The DSJC enables organisations
concerned by the digital skills gap to
be proactive and propose actions,
programmes, initiatives to
contribute to the digital
transformation of Europeans
▪ 25 National Coalitions
▪ A community of 513
organisations
▪ The activities of the DSJC focus
around 4 key target groups
The Coalition activities

4. DESI 2020 - ICT specialists
• Employed ICT specialists in the EU: 3.9% of total employment (ICT specialists is a broad definition including
jobs like ICT service managers, ICT professionals, ICT technicians, ICT installers and servicers)
• Shortage of ICT specialists on the labour market: 64% of large enterprises and 56% of SMEs that recruited
ICT specialists during 2018, reported that vacancies for ICT specialists are hard to fill

5. European Strategy for Data
▪ Big data and analytics are top of the list of critical skills
shortages. In 2017, approximately 496 000 unfilled positions in
the area of big data;
▪ General data literacy in the workforce and across the
population is relatively low;
▪ if not addressed, the shortage in data experts and the lack of
data literacy will affect the EU’s capacity to master the
challenges of the data economy and society.
• Aims at creating a single market for data;
• Common European data spaces will ensure that more data becomes available for use in the
economy and society

6. Digital Europe Programme
Advanced digital skills
High
performance
computing
Cybersecurity &
trust
Artificial
intelligence
Digital
transformation and
interoperability
EC proposal: budget EUR 9.2
billion (2021-2027)
Gains from common EU investments in
digital technologies will only materialise if
there is a sufficient number of skilled
people to develop, roll-out and use these
new technologies.
Investment to boost the number of digital
specialists in the EU is necessary and must
go hand-in-hand with investments in
technologies.
WHY advanced digital skills?

7. AI & data in European companies
42% of European
companies use at least
one AI technology
Large enterprises are
twice as likely to take
advantage of AI
Only 20% develop it in-
house, largely outsourced
Skills gap is a problem for
AI - 57% cite difficulties
hiring skilled staff and
45% a lack of skills
33% find data
standardisation to be a
significant barrier
Source: European enterprise survey on the use of
technologies based on artificial intelligence (2020) EC

8. ▪ Research groups and
SMEs/startups equally struggle to
attract talent
▪ University curricula are not
responding to the market
▪ Need to improve attractiveness
of the different fields and
promote true collaboration with
industry for skills development
Bridging the digital talent gap
▪ Require specialised curricula
focusing on interdisciplinarity and
sector or vertical knowledge
▪ Training in AI skills needs to be
accessible to those from other
disciplines
▪ Rome, October 2019
Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity
Source: Bridging the Digital Talent Gap - Towards Successful
Industry-University Partnerships (2020) Informatics Europe

9. ▪ Digital skills hardest to fill:
1. Software Engineering
2. Cloud computing
3. Data Science
4. Cybersecurity
5. UI/UX
Blueprints for upskilling SMEs
Based on the analysis 74,000 LinkedIn posts
comparing vacancies and time to fill them over a
period of three months in 2018
▪ The ICT sector shows the highest
digital skills gap, followed by
Consulting, Finance and Telecom
▪ Big data courses are more than 2
times more expensive than those
for other skills such as AI, IoT
Source: Digital Skills: New Professions, New
Educational Methods, New Jobs, (2018) EC

10. ▪ 149 pledges, 353 initiatives and
12 million beneficiaries on the
Pledge Viewer
▪ Of these, 25 pledges are focused
on certification, and 18 are
aimed at SMEs
▪ 90,000 digital skills certificates
offered
▪ 7 focusing on big data, from
organisations such as BDVA,
Cisco, DigitalES, Ubiqum, Dell,
ORT France and Wings ICT
Solutions
Pledges – a way forward

11. @DigitalSkillsEU
#DSJCoalition