Digital Economy, Recovery Plan & Skills (Unit F.4)

A new multi-lingual online tool to help people evaluate their digital skills and thrive in the digital world.

The Commission published the results of the 2021 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which tracks digital progress made in EU Member States in key areas.

The 2021 Women in Digital Scoreboard shows a significant gender gap remains in specialist digital skills, though the gap is closing in internet user skills.

The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) monitors Europe’s overall digital performance and tracks the progress of EU countries in their digital competitiveness.

From 9-24 October, EU Code Week is back for its ninth edition, offering new activities such as ready-made classroom challenges, a training Bootcamp for teachers, the final in a series of hackathons and thousands of activities organised around the world by teachers and coding enthusiasts.

National stakeholders and the European Commission have joined forces to create the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform to accelerate digital upskilling in Europe.

The first annual European Girls and Women in ICT day takes place on 22 April 2021, as a part of the commitment EU countries made in the Ministerial Declaration on Women in Digital of 9 April, 2019. In this first edition, several member states have organised online events to showcase the opportunities and challenges for girls and women to study technology, enter and stay in the job market of the digital sector, despite a difficult year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, EU Code Week brings six extraordinary hackathons to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Romania and Slovenia. In these countries, Code Week invites upper secondary school students to form teams and use their coding skills to solve a local challenge.

Hundreds of stakeholders have provided valuable insights to the National Digital Skills and Jobs Coalitions across Belgium, Italy and Austria through the first Community-led Events with more to follow in Czechia, Malta and Lithuania.

Throughout the mandate of the current Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition (DSJC) Governing Board, the Coalition has achieved growth, consolidation and digital skills for millions of Europeans.

Despite increased interest in the cybersecurity field, the gender gap persists. Women are still highly underrepresented among its ranks, while the majority of jobs are being filled primarily by men. The future of cybersecurity is influenced by its ability to attract, retain and promote more cyber professionals including more women. We need an interdisciplinary approach to reach high level of cybersecurity.

The Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition acknowledges pledger organisations who are also participating in the recently launched Pact for Skills.

Despite the challenges that schools around Europe and the world faced in 2020, over 3.4 million students and teachers from 84 countries joined the EU Code Week initiative and took part in more than 72,000 coding activities. The next edition of EU Code Week will take place from 9 to 24 October 2021.

Europeans will soon have the opportunity to enjoy a brand new learning experience in Artificial Intelligence (AI). 4 networks of universities, SMEs and top researchers will offer new high-quality specialised Master programmes and courses in AI funded by the Connecting Europe Facility Telecom.

Digital skills are necessary to study, work, communicate, access online public services, and find trustworthy information.

The study reviews 2019 retail prices of fixed and mobile broadband offers for consumers in the 27 EU States and the UK, Iceland, Norway, Japan, South Korea and the USA. For the first time, data for both fixed and mobile broadband offers was collected during the same monitoring period, from 7 to 20 October 2019.

EU countries outperform their global counterparts in terms of digital skills, from basic to advanced, but they consistently lag behind in the digitisation of public services, a newly published study shows. The International Digital Economy and Society Index (I-DESI) analyses how EU countries rank in terms of connectivity, digital skills, use of internet, integration of digital technology and digital public services in contrast with 18 other non-EU countries.

The Commission has published the 2020 Women in Digital Scoreboard. Women have spearheaded innovation essential to the advancement of digital technology – from computer algorithms to programming. Yet, they are still less likely to have specialist digital skills and work in this field compared to men. Only when looking at the basic digital skills, the gender gap has narrowed, from 10.5% in 2015 to 7.7% in 2019.

Women across Europe are less likely to have specialist digital skills and work in this field compared to men. According to the Commission’s 2020 Women in Digital (WiD) Scoreboard, only 18% of ICT specialists are women and the gender gap is present in all 12 indicators measured.

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.