September 25th
DAY 2: eSkills and Jobs for the 21st century
While the objective of the first day was to provide a space where participants could meet and continue
the thematic discussions often initiated on-line, the second day was dedicated to set up the scene in terms
of the European eSkills gap. Speakers were invited to share with the audience how private companies,
universities and governments deal with the issue. The day was also dedicated to promoting the role of
the e-Facilitator as a multiplier of digital skills in telecentres, their professional qualification and capacity
building.
The day was opened by Telecentre Europe Board Chair Dr.
Mara Jakobsone and TE’s Managing Director Gabriel Rissola.
They each welcomed the audience to the 7th edition of the
TE annual conference and then explained the background
history of the conference and the current state of TE as an
organisation. Mara Jakobsone explained that TE membership
has grown in size and kind, currently representing a wide array
of digital empowerment and e-inclusion intermediaries and
encompassing organisations such as telecentres, libraries and
other publicly funded ICT learning centres. At the moment
there are 43 member organisations from 29 countries.
In addition to formal members, TE has also established a fully active informal community of organisations
and individuals known as Unite-IT, some of who met and networked already on the first day of TEAC14.
The objectives of the Annual Conference have always been to share and multiply the effort of the
network, evaluate the challenges ahead, promote messages and policies and support our network in their
endeavours. Before Zagreb many other European capitals hosted the conference: more recently Malta and
Warsaw, and previously Budapest, Riga, Brussels and Istanbul.
The first introductory speech was made by the host country (Croatia) representative Hrvoje Balen,
Coordinator of the eSkills for Jobs campaign in Croatia and member of the Managing board at Algebra
University (College for Applied Computer Engineering). He made a comprehensive overview of the state
of affairs in the Croatian ICT sector. With an ICT market value of more than 820 million euro per year and
almost 30,000 employees in the field, the salaries in the sector are nowhere as high as the EU neighbours’
salaries but higher than its non-EU members such as Serbia or Bosnia. Croatia is known for its high labour
productivity in the ICT sector compared to the EU average. The ICT job profiles with the highest demand in
2014 was without a doubt that of software developer (61%).
The main question remains where the needed IT engineers will come from
in the future. A nationwide survey taken in 2013 and 2014 asked 5,000 highschool students about their preferred study options. The majority of students
continue to favour the Faculty of Philosophy (Humanities) in Zagreb, followed
by the Faculties of Economics and in third place, the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering and Computing. Young people are therefore increasingly not
choosing STEM careers and what prevents them is a variety of factors often
related to wrong perceptions about the field of study and their own capacities
(“I am not capable” mentality) but also the fact that these careers are not
easy and take time and effort to complete. H. Balen then described the eSkills
Campaign activities in Croatia: the events, projects and research carried out
in close collaboration with big and mid-size ICT companies. The pending tasks
are the Croatian site dedicated to the e-Competencies framework, a citizen
workshop and more career guidance activities for youth. The campaign results
12
so far are promising: the youth guarantee is being
implemented with ICT and e-skills in mind and there
will be changes to the employment taxation, which
may reduce the heavy tax burden for salaries in
the sector. In addition, a steady rise in the interest
among young people to enrol in ICT studies has
been observed.
The Internet pioneer in Croatia, ICT researcher and
professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering
and Computing at the University of Zagreb,
Predrag Pale was provocative in his keynote speech
addressing different aspects of eSkills for jobs and
ICT developments both in Croatia and in Europe. As
he pointed out, every profession has a buzzword,
and in ICT that word is a number: 900,000. We
have all heard it before, and although the estimate
may be conservative the actual question to ask, as
P. Pale suggests, is what types of jobs there will be
available.
After comparing various ways of defining and
categorising ICT jobs, P. Pale proposed his own
division. The four categories of ICT jobs according to
him would be: 1) ICT creators and producers 2) ICT
implementers and supporters 3) ICT applicators and,
finally 4) ICT users. The first group requires in-depth
technical background, complex lab equipment
and practical experience. In his view this job type
is best left for universities to train for. The second
group is also best left to university education and
professional trainings. ICT implementers need to
understand the environment they work and should
either be specialized in ICT or in the environment
itself, for example the field of economics or law.
ICT supporters, however, do not always need a
university education and can learn their work in a
variety of courses (e.g. also in telecentres). The third
group, ICT applicators, are basically inventing new
ways of doing old things and sometimes inventing
completely new things. They require creativity;
some ICT competence and their education may
be provided by telecentres with trainers who
understand the domain where ICT is applied. The
last group (ICT users) use ICT as a tool but to perform
other “everyday” tasks such as communicating with
others, build their social capital, find jobs, etc. Their
goal is to become a fluent user and to use ICT in
their everyday needs as a citizen, a consumer or
entrepreneur for example.
Jobs). He sees telecentres as crucial for reaching out
to certain groups, especially the unemployed, who
are not only looking for work but