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National initiatives

This section presents an overview of national strategies, policies, and nationwide initiatives in digital skills area. They aim to promote and support digital skills development for ICT specialists, workforce, general citizens, and education systems for EU member states. 
 

National Strategies

Over a third of the member states have recently approved a general country digitalization (digital growth or digital transformation) strategy. In these strategic documents digital skills is one of the key pillars together with other priorities of country’s digital transformation goals. The typical examples here are: Digital Austria in 2050Digital Bulgaria 2025Digital Growth Strategy DenmarkGermany’s Digital strategy 2025Dutch digitization strategy 2.0Digital transformation Strategy for Slovakia 2030. Several countries will have updates and new Digital strategies in 2021, including Belgium, Latvia, Estonia, Spain, and some others, setting goals for next 5 to 10 years.

In some of the EU member states there are dedicated standalone National Digital skills strategies.  In Portugal, in 2017, the Portuguese government established the National Digital Competences Initiative e.2030, Portugal INCoDe 2030, an integrated public policy to enhance and foster digital competences. In Malta, the National eSkills Strategy 2019-2021 sets very precise goals for digital skills development together with metric KPI’s.  In Ireland, a very targeted Technology Skills 2022: Ireland’s Third ICT Skills Action Plan defines priorities for digital skills in education and from ICT specialists. In Italy, in July 2020, the National Strategy for Digital Skills was defined, within a comprehensive framework, with four lines of intervention for students, active workforce, ICT specialists and citizens.

In many EU member states digital skills development targets are integrated in general national education, industry digitalization or employment  strategies and policies, such as Digital Workforce program HungaryLithuanian Digitisation  Roadmap 2019- 2030National Digitalisation Strategy for the School System in Sweden.

Finally, several countries have strategies and policies targeting some specific digital skills and ICT technology field areas. For example, in Finland, a couple of strategies and projects for AI are implemented at national level and, in Latvia, the Latvia's Cybersecurity Strategy 2019-2022 has specific goals to educate public and local administration staff on ICT safety, as well as provide cybersecurity skills for SME’s and citizens.

As EU member states constantly develop and approve new national strategies and plan to support and foster digital skills, this section will be continuously updated with the latest information.