The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies
CEPIS
The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) is a non-profit organisation seeking to improve and promote a high standard among informatics professionals in recognition of the impact that Informatics has on employment, business and society.
ID: 372608916662-62
Lobbying Activity
Response to Improving the provision of digital skills in education and training
16 Sept 2022
The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) welcomes this initiative of the European Commission. CEPIS believes that:
1. Digital skills provision in different levels of education and training, but especially during primary and secondary education, should be intrinsically linked to the provision of education in informatics to ensure proper foundations to the acquisition of competences. There should be a special focus on promoting competence in critical aspects for people like privacy, security, safety, and wellbeing in the context of the use and management of digital technologies.
2. Provision of digital skills should start in the early stages of education, namely, in primary education, ensuring sound foundations of basic competences with clear guidance of work based on common frameworks and consolidated references.
3. Teachers are a critical part of the provision of digital skills. It is important to emphasise that acquiring adequate digital skills applies not only to informatics teachers, but also teachers of all other subjects, given the increased use of technology in education.
o Many countries show the lack of highly qualified informatics teachers, so we recommend actions for promoting vocation as well as for increment of positions in education. We also emphasise the importance of retention of talent in informatics teaching.
o The responsible authorities should ensure that newly hired teachers have passed assessment and/or certification tests in digital capacity and in capacity in teaching with digital resources. Such tests should be independent of training providers, mapped to the main frameworks depending on the level of assessment (see point 5) and based on objective evidence of capacity in knowledge and performance, not self-assessment or self-declaration of previous activities.
o The number of Full Time Equivalent informatics teachers in proportion to number of students should be added as an indicator in the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). This would provide a clear overview of advancement in provision of digital skills. This would also include the number of teachers who have passed independent tests on digital capacity.
4. Digital skills and competences are applicable to all levels and range from basic and general digital skills for everybody to the very advanced skills of ICT professionals and specialised hybrid profiles with string ICT activity. The European Commission should continue to consistently encourage education, training and certification activities related to digital skills.
5. Depending on goals, levels or aforementioned contexts, digital skills education and training needs to be mapped and linked to the two main reference frameworks in the area to provide common terminology and guidance and, in the case of EN16234, also a better alignment to the labour market:
o DigComp for basic general digital skills
o European e-Competence Framework (EN16234) for advanced, specialised and ICT professional skills and competences.
Finally, many initiatives and policy decisions have been taken in terms of promotion of social and sustainability aspects such as green, gender equality or inclusion in general. There are directives and national legislation making digital accessibility compulsory in public entities and education. The implementation is still scarce but possibly progressing in the future with the support of national and local authorities as it is integrated in legislation. However, we detect some deficit of advocacy and promotion of digital accessibility in the EU funding programmes as they do not offer specific guidelines on digital accessibility in the description of evaluation criteria of proposals . Equally, it has not been mandated that any deliverables developed through public funding should be accessible. CEPIS believes that these aspects need to be addressed, as digital accessibility has a direct impact on acquisition and ability to use digital competences.
Read full responseMeeting with Monika Maglione (Cabinet of Commissioner Ylva Johansson)
10 Jun 2022 · EU efforts to prevent and tackle child sexual abuse.
Response to Europe’s digital decade: 2030 digital targets
8 Mar 2021
The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on this initiative.
CEPIS agrees with the outlined goals, especially with the emphasis on aligning digital policies with citizens’ needs and expectations. We particularly support the Commission’s proposal for a Charter of Digital Principles, since we believe that ethical and secure behaviour in the digital space, as well as citizens’ and businesses’ awareness of their rights and obligations, has up to now been insufficiently addressed within the broader rhetoric on Europe’s digital present and future. We would also like to highlight that professional ethics is an important component of IT professionalism. In addition, definition and promotion of standards for IT professionals is becoming increasingly important since more parts people’s daily lives are becoming digitalised, and there is a lack for structure and regulation around the IT profession. The IT professionalism standards are being developed by the CEN/ TC428. The best known of them is e-Competence Framework (e-CF), a European standard that outlines competences for IT professionals. It is crucial to support their development and adoption by industry, education and IT professionals themselves across all Member States.
CEPIS agrees with the need to increase the number of highly-skilled IT professionals. In addition, we would like to point out that more attention should be paid to upskilling the general workforce. Firstly, because of the rapid digitalisation of different business sectors due to the Covid-19 pandemic, jobs which hitherto did not require digital skills, do so now, as stated in Cedefop’s recent summary of the current digital skills needs and trends in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Secondly, since one of the targets mentioned in the Commission’s communication is fostering the digitalisation of government, it is extremely important to ensure that no group is left in a situation where essential government services are not available to them due to lack of digital skills (e.g., senior citizens, people living in rural areas etc.). CEPIS also believes that any digital skills training should be accompanied by certification as a proof of skills acquired. The European Commission recognises the importance of certification in the DEAP. However, it is crucial to make sure that the certification schemes are mapped to the DigComp framework and that their quality is monitored and approved on the EU level.
Finally, if one of the aims is to “empower people as a driving force for digital transformation”, it is crucial to educate people about different aspects of digital policies. If citizens are to be involved in policy-making, effort must be made at national and European levels to ensure that citizens are well-informed and have at least a basic understanding of the current trends of the digital world.
Read full responseResponse to Digital Education Action Plan
14 Jul 2020
CEPIS welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the Digital Education Action plan update. There are several points we would like to emphasise.
The lessons learned from on-line teaching during the COVID-19 crisis have shown that:
A. some schools and teachers that already made great use of digital tools and e-Learning environments have been able to switch to distance learning within a few days or even a few hours
B. many schools and most teachers were not prepared at all for the leap into distance and digital learning in large scale, but promptly committed themselves to devising solutions
C. the main difficulty was not to learn how to use new tools (in particular videoconference platforms) but concerns methodologies: models traditionally used in presence, as frontal lecture sequences, do not work remotely, which is valid especially for elementary education
D. far more students than previously understood have little to no access to computing resources (hardware, bandwidth, connectivity, time on machine, safe spaces in which to learn).
E. existing inequities in the workforce are also being revealed and shown that the lack of basic digital skills by large percentages of the population limit job opportunities not only generally but most especially when national economies were impacted by work stoppages and shut-downs.
COVID-19 experience has highlighted three major issues when it comes to teaching and learning:
1. unequal access to resources needed for teaching and learning on-line – devices, internet connection, platforms, digital learning content etc.
2. lack of digital skills of teachers, pupils and parents
3. the current teaching methodology and curriculum does not suit remote/blended learning models.
Therefore, the updated DEAP should increase the digital capacity and make efforts to distribute EU funds in a way that would favour ensuring equal access to the necessary resources for all children and teachers, be it digital infrastructure, devices or access to learning materials. CEPIS is convinced that DEAP should focus strongly on increasing digital skills of the educators and push for the inclusion of digital competences for 21st century in the school curricula. This should be connected with some form of certification proving the achieved results of pupils and the same principle should be applied in lifelong learning with the aim of increasing the digital competence of the workforce. If remote/blended teaching and learning is to become the new norm in formal education (both for new pandemic wave and for remote learning for children not present due to illness or other reasons in school), then different curricula and teaching methodologies must be developed to suit these models, and proper pedagogical pre-service and in-service training must be a fundamental part of this change. The quality of education should be the key priority of both the European Commission and the Member States.
According to our opinion and experience in the area of digital skills the digital competence development in the future should rely on two key principles:
1) The digital competence framework for citizens (DigComp 2.0 refined to fit this new purpose) should be used as the framework for digital competence development 2) The acquired competences should be validated through practical and neutral systems compatible with DigComp. The European Commission should create a system in which practical digital skills training and certification programmes would be reviewed and accredited at European level in line with DigComp (example of a similar exercise can be found in UNESCO’s paper ‘A Global Framework of Reference on Digital Literacy Skills for Indicator 4.4.2’). This would allow to accurately measure the quality and results of the digital skills training and evaluate the ‘return on investment’ of the European and national funds.
More details can be found in our position paper.
Read full responseMeeting with Anthony Whelan (Cabinet of President Ursula von der Leyen)
7 Jul 2020 · Digital skills need. CEN e-competence framework. JRC digital competence framework for citizens. Objective certification. Digital Education Action Plan, builing on EU Skills Agenda. Need for coordination & monitoring.
Meeting with Agnieszka Skonieczna (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)
18 Jun 2020 · Exchange on digital skills
Meeting with Ruth Paserman (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis)
9 Jun 2020 · Digital skills
Meeting with Anouk Faber (Cabinet of Commissioner Nicolas Schmit), Christoph Nerlich (Cabinet of Commissioner Nicolas Schmit)
8 Apr 2020 · Videoconference meeting on Skills
Meeting with Jean-Philippe Gammel (Cabinet of Commissioner Tibor Navracsics) and Oracle and European e-Skills Association
5 Dec 2017 · Digital education