Strategies to Address the Digital Skills Gap in the EU

The EU is undergoing a dual digital-green transition, yet it continues to experience significant gaps in ICT specialists and adequate re/up-skilling in digital skills for ICT professionals, the overall workforce and the general population.

In this context, Huawei and All Digital, have collaborated with the support from EY Advisory, in combining analysis of existing data with original insight from primary sources to:

• investigate the key elements that characterise the digital skills gap in the EU
• report the main challenges faced by industry, and the existing policy and industry responses
• identify possible areas where relevant stakeholders can play a role in the next decade.

The proposed analysis encompasses the EU-27, with a deeper focus on the experiences of four countries: Finland, France, Germany and Italy. After defining the scope of the report, the analysis starts with the attempt to measure the skills gap in the EU. It then delves into the main areas of attention, which represent also opportunities for public and private actors to contribute to address the digital skills gap in the EU.

Here are the main policy discussions that arose from the report:

Improve and increase ICT education and learning opportunities. More ICT graduates and professionals are entering the labour market at an increasing rate. Yet, enterprises report difficulties in hiring, largely due to a lack of trained professionals with education and training that meet companies’ expectations.

Prioritise talent within companies. Up/re-skilling: the number of companies providing up/re-skilling opportunities varies by Member States, particularly in SMEs. 

Women are grossly underrepresented in ICT and, therefore, are a large source of untapped talent. The gender imbalance in digital skills is accentuated at higher levels educational attainment, iindicating that girls may need further encouragement to develop their digital skills in education.

Drive collaborative digital skills ecosystems. Despite efforts at the EU level, all actors (e.g. education and training providers, industry, national and local government, etc.) hold the belief that complete and effective cooperation is missing.

Invest in the digitalisation of public services. Research has shown that digitalisation of public services and procedures is strongly associated with preparedness to adopt and integrate digital learning into the educational ecosystem, underlining its critical role in the digital-green transition.