EURIM Information Society Workforce Skills Working Group

This Group is due to be restructured and re-launched in January 2012 in the light of discussions at a planning meeting schedule for 17th October 2011.

The focus of UK education and training policy over that past forty years has been on first entry education, schools-to-university and remedial education/training for the socially excluded. The need to maintain and update the skills of those in the workforce and to enable them to acquire and demonstrate new skills as demand changes has not been a priority. We now face the consequences. The aim of this group is to create and maintain globally competitive workforce skills at all levels, from technical and linguistic competence through system specification, development, integration and operation to product and service research, design, development and implementation. That requires a “politically challenging” change of focus.

Introduction, Objectives and Strategy

Work Programme for 2011 and Forthcoming Meetings

Recent Meetings

Group Outputs (Papers and Briefings)

Other Relevant Documents & Links

Members Page – for meeting details, minutes, working drafts, and additional group information

Previous work programme for this group

Introduction, Objectives and Strategy

This group builds on work on IT Skills needs and on Lifelong Learning networks, from “Re-skilling Europe for the Information Society”, through “E-Skills Summits” in 2001 and 2002 and responses to consultations from successive agencies which failed to act on the answers.  Meanwhile the skills of those working in the UK ICT industry have atrophied, save for those lucky enough to work for employers who invest in their own staff instead of outsourcing. There are also problems with the quality and quantity of new entrants with neglect of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, including Computer Science) skills base.

Meanwhile the success of the Millennium Bugbusters Programme (40,000 trained to common standards in basic PC maintenance skills using the "excuse" of Y2K) showed what is possible, to short order, using commercial short course methods under "industry strength" quality control.  The reasons that success of that programme was not followed up indicate the scale and nature of the structural changes needed to enable UK colleges and universities to turn the growth in demand for global, modular, lifelong learning and continuous professional developments networks into serious revenue streams.  Those revenue streams will enable them to better keep abreast of the waves of change, with world-class research and leading edge teaching in new technologies, as these merge and transition from laboratory to market.

Objective
To create and maintain a globally competitive workforce at all levels, from basic technical and linguistic competence through system specification, development, integration and operation to product and service research, design, development and implementation, using the need to ensure world class (including security and resilience) communications infrastructures for the 2012 onwards (beginning with the Olympic “challenge”) to expedite progress.

Strategy
Parliamentary and Political: to work with bodies like the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing, the Relevant Sector Skills Councils, Professional bodies and employers to interest a cadre of MPs who will support action to reduce the after-tax cost of training and enable colleges and universities to become self-funding centres of lifelong learning, with the flexibility to respond to changing needs, without waiting for government funding agencies to agree.

Industrial and Professional: to use current and emerging skills crises, such as that for electronic security skills, to bring together a critical mass of employers (including public sector) and suppliers (including colleges, universities, recruitment agencies etc.) to secure effective action, including removal of the organisational and fiscal constraints that have prevented this in the past.

Work Programme for 2011 and Forthcoming Meetings

1. Use the problems with the supply of cybersecurity skills to assemble a cadre of employers and educators/trainers willing to work together.
2. Help e-Skills to launch the Security Stream of the National Academy of IT Skills and demonstrate success in bringing employers and educators together to agree frameworks to address current/emerging shortages.
3. Assemble networks of University Departments willing to work together to provide local access to globally respected security courses and materials and secure the employer support/throughput to demonstrate sustainability.
4. Use success with 1, 2 and 3 as the basis for a major policy study and associated campaign for action in 2012.

Forthcoming Meetings

Recent Meetings

Date	Subject	Papers
28 Feb 11	Cyber Security Skills Meeting
08 Nov 10	Cyber Security Skills Meeting	Summary Report

Group Outputs (Papers and Briefings)

Date	Description
May 10	The Crisis for UK HE Computing & the Knowledge Economy (draft for discussion only)
Outputs prior to 2008

Other Relevant Documents and Links

Date	Description
Oct 10	EURIM response to the BIS Consultation on a Simplified Further Education & Skills Funding System & Methodology
Oct 10	EURIM response to the BIS Consultation on Skills for Sustainable Growth
Outputs prior to 2008