News about Digital Skills

Digital transition is a key to Europe’s future prosperity and resilience. As part of the next long-term EU budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework, the Commission has proposed the Digital Europe programme, the EU’s programme to accelerate the recovery and drive the digital transformation of Europe.

The work on the European Digital Skills and Jobs Platform has started in September. The objective is to develop and manage a key tool for boosting digital skills in Europe. It will offer information, resources, overview of training and funding opportunities and a community space for networking and collaboration both on European and national level.

In a major effort to improve existing skills and training in new ones, the European Commission is launching a Pact for Skills.

EU Code Week took place this year from 10 to 25 October. Teachers, students, NGOs and tech companies in 83 countries participated in the grassroots initiative organising more than 69,000 activities as part of Code Week so far. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, this is at the same level as 2019.

The 8th edition of the European Code Week, a grass-roots initiative supported by the European Commission, which aims to make everyone familiar with coding and digital technologies in an entertaining and engaging way, opened on Thursday 8 October with an online event. From 10 to 25 October Code Week will feature lots of online activities and an original #CodeWeekDance challenge in which schools, teachers, libraries, businesses and many more, will have the opportunity to participate.

Pledges made to the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition can now be better grouped and compared through a build-your-own scoreboard tool on the Pledge Viewer which looks at the absolute and relative impact of organisations and their pledges. With this new feature, the actions of those organisations who have worked hard to drive the development of digital skills in Europe will be more easily highlighted than before.

The Commission has adopted two initiatives that will strengthen the contribution of education and training to the EU's recovery from the coronavirus crisis, and help build a green and digital Europe.

During the pandemic, we all turned – to some extent – to digital. Confinement boosted teleconsultations. Businesses found new ways to collaborate with employees and reach customers. Teachers explored platforms to engage with their scattered classrooms. Through our screens, we shared laughs and extended comfort. Network connectivity is the foundation of the digital landscape. 20% of NextGenerationEU, the EU’s recovery package, should be in invested in digital. It keeps us together. We need to strengthen that foundation today, for the upcoming Digital Decade.

The European Commission has published the first quantitative overview on the uptake of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies among European enterprises. This study will help monitor the adoption of AI in Member States and further assess the challenges faced by enterprises, for their internal organisation and externally.

EU Code Week has just launched a series of videos to help kids and parents learn basic computational thinking concepts while having fun together. The videos target everyone with a curious mind above 5 years old and are available in 29 languages.