Europe's Digital Decade is one of the European Commission's top priorities to consolidate the EU's digital sovereignty and set the standards for digitalisation. By 2030, the EU aims to make 80% of its population digitally literate, primarily as digitalisation is critical in combating climate change and achieving the green transition.
On 7 September 2023, during the Spanish EU Presidency, ministers presented their priorities to the European Parliament committees. In education, ministers highlighted the cross-cutting importance of Open Strategic Self-Government, whose guarantee is closely linked to training citizens on topics such as sustainability and digitalisation.
The first State of the Digital Decade report, published in September 2023, takes stock of the EU's progress towards successful digital transformation for people, businesses and the environment.
The annex report for Spain acknowledges the country's significant progress in achieving the goals of the Digital Decade across all four dimensions, surpassing the EU average in most indicators. Regarding digital skills, 64% of the Spanish population has basic digital skills (54% EU average). The percentage of ICT specialists is 4.3% (4.6% in the EU), and the percentage of ICT graduates is 0.6 points above the EU average (4.2% in the EU).
The anticipation of training needs has been fundamental in this process of improving Spain’s digital skills.
2019 and 2021: promotion of digital skills training tools
The State public employment service (SEPE) and Fundae have long been aware of the need for training in this area. In 2019, they launched the Digitalízate portal, which provides free e-resources for improving digital skills at different levels, durations, languages and topics.
They continued this initiative in October 2021, with Digitalízate Plus. This is an entry portal for all training services available to citizens in response to market needs. It includes a high level of technological and digital content in addition to what was already provided in Digitalízate.
2023: launch of the online training platform
Fundae launched its own online training platform in July. The platform's training offer, validated by experts in the field, is accessible to all citizens, although the current 21 training courses were designed mainly for the self-employed and workers from the social economy.
Electronic invoicing, digital marketing and the management of virtual teams are some of the learning content aimed at the self-employed. At the same time, in the social economy, we find transversal competences, such as using digital devices and tools, cybersecurity, creating digital content and online procedures with the public administration.
Some of these courses are tutored and offer a certificate of achievement and completion, while all include continuous assessment.
More than 2 500 people registered in the first month, and by the end of October, the platform already had 5 000 participants, of which almost 1 600 have completed at least one course. October 2023 closed with a waiting list for participation in this training.
Work is underway to add new contents to promote digital skills for citizens on Industry 4.0, programming, design, video games, e-commerce, design and sales strategy, data analysis and management, and topics related to sustainability and the environment or internationalisation and entrepreneurship.
Read more
- Europe’s Digital Decade: digital targets for 2030
- 2023 Report on the state of the Digital Decade
- Spain: Promotion of training in digital skills for workers
- Digitalízate Plus
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Please cite this news item as: ReferNet Spain; Cedefop (2023). Spain: boosting tools for upskilling and reskilling citizens in digital skills. National news on VET |