Do the Digital Skills include DiDIY?
EU Digital Champions, are appointed by the Members States and we strive to help every European become digital and benefit from an inclusive digital society. In December 2015, the Digital Champions called upon Ministers of the EU Member States to "tackle the cross-cutting issue of the digital skills gap in the face of a fast-changing world and the rapid digitisation of Europe":
"Today around 100 million EU citizens have no digital skills and are excluded from the digital society. We, the European Union's Digital Champions, call upon the relevant Ministers in the Member States of the European Union to take measures to tackle this digital skills gap in order to ensure that Europe can reap the benefits of digitisation".
More in detail the Digital Champions "call upon relevant Ministers in the Member States to work closely together with stakeholders to [among other things] urgently":
- Ensure all European citizens have digital skills and get online. To make European citizens aware of how ICT can enhance their work capabilities and employability and facilitate their day-to-day activities.
- Ensure that no student should leave school without a basic set of digital skills.
- Foster entrepreneurial and innovation abilities through digital skills.
- Help businesses embrace new technologies
We, the We help all citizens to enhance their digital skills by supporting and leading a wide variety of digital projects in our countries. We are also actively involved in:
- 13 national Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs
- EU Code Week initiative, which promotes digital skills and coding
The Digital Single Market program also stresses the importance of "digital skills": "In the near future 90% of jobs - in careers such as engineering, accountancy, nursing, medicine, art, architecture, and many more - will require some level of digital skills."
In January 2016, this infographic on the same theme, titled "a digital Europe needs Digital Skills" was widely circulated on Twitter:
But in all these declarations and programs, as well in the EU DESI Index, there still seems to be something missing, as we had already noticed in the conclusions our "Digital DIY awareness report":
Where are, in all these visions and declarations, digital DIY skills?
Apparently, the open letter of the Digital Champions, the Digital Single Market declaration, the eSkills infographic only talk about "better digital" citizens, consumers and workers. (again) Apparently, that is, they all seem to put in the spotlight mostly digital skills that, as proposed and worded, may have nothing of DIY in them. Whereas we have already found, as our fact sheets explain, plenty of evidence that it is exactly the DIY opportunities created by digital technologies that have a huge potential. Whether that will be a positive or negative one is the object of our research. We look forward to discuss these topics directly with EU Digital Champions and Digital Single Market representatives.
