EURIM Information
Society Workforce Skills Working Group
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 2010 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 many years of work on IT Skills needs and on
Lifelong Learning networks, from “Re-skilling Europe for the
Information Society” (1997), through “E-Skills Summits” in
2001 and 2002 and responses to a whole slew of consultations –
often repeating the same questions every other year or even in
parallel from different agencies. But apart from the Millennium
Bug-busters Programme, updating the skills of the existing workforce
has been outside departmental priorities since the 1980s.
Meanwhile the skills of those currently working in the UK ICT
industry atrophy, except for those who are lucky enough to work for
employers who have invested 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.
UK colleges and
universities need to be able to exploit the growth of global, modular, lifelong
learning and continuous professional developments networks as a major revenue
stream, that will reduce dependence on public funding and better enable them to
keep abreast of the waves of change, with world class research and teaching in
new technologies, as they emerge 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 be centres of lifelong learning not just first entry
education, with the flexibility to pursue alternative sources for
that which is outside current government priorities.
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.
Group Outputs (Papers and Briefings)
Other Relevant Documents and Links
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