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Wolffried Stucky and Peter Weiß (Eds.) eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future Workshop Proceedings Council of European Professional Informatics Societies eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future Workshop Proceedings eChallenges e-2003 Conference 22 October, Bologna, Italy Edited by Wolffried Stucky Workshop Chairman CEPIS Council of European Professional Informatics Societies and Peter Weiß Workshop Co-ordinator Institute for Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods – AIFB University of Karlsruhe, Germany Council of European Professional Informatics Societies http://www.cepis.org © 2004 CEPIS and the authors mentioned in the table of contents All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN 3-00-013499-9 Publisher & Distributor Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) Stresemannallee 15 60596 Frankfurt am Main Germany Email: [email protected] Phone: +49 (69) 6308 393 Fax: +49 (69) 9631 5233 Print Heinrich Fischer Rheinische Druckerei GmbH Mainzer Straße 67547 Worms Germany Phone: +49 (6241) 4253 0 Fax: +49 (6241) 425399 Acknowledgements The editors are pleased to be able to acknowledge the contributions of all authors and workshop participants to carry out this workshop. Special thanks belong to the eChallenges e-2003 Conference, who invited CEPIS to organise this workshop in Bologna. In particular the editors are pleased to acknowledge the support of the following organisations to produce this book: eChallenges e-2003 Conference Secretariat Mireille Edin ADERA Service BP 196 - 33608 Pessac Cedex – France Internet: http://www.echallenges.org European Certification of Informatics Professionals EUCIP Ltd 1 Sanford Street, Swindon SN1 1HJ, United Kingdom Email: [email protected] Internet: http://www.eucip.com European Computer Driving Licence Foundation The ECDL Foundation Ltd. Third Floor Portview House Thorncastle Street Dublin 4, Ireland Email: [email protected] (Please include your country location details in your query.) Internet: http://www.ecdl.com eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future Introduction The existing European IT skills gap is one of the biggest challenges for IT industry during the next years. CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Societies) sets out to reduce the European IT skills gap bringing industry, academia, public and governmental bodies together to define objectives, exchange experiences and agree on appropriate future activities. Appropriate measures and activities have to be accepted European wide and should be based on an agreed standard. CEPIS organised this workshop on Wednesday, 22nd October 2003 during the eChallenges e-2003 Conference taking place this year in Bologna, Italy. The workshop has been a networking event and has targeted to kick-off a series of similar events to bring together industry, academia and European Commission, to exchange experiences made and to define future steps and related necessary future activities to close the current IT skills gap across Europe. eChallenges e-2003 is the thirteenth in a series of annual conferences, which regularly attract over 500 delegates from commercial, government and research organisations around the world. Focusing on e-Business, e-Government, organisational knowledge, e- Work and knowledge work and e-Europe 2005, the goal of e-2003 is to stimulate rapid take-up of Research and Technology Development (RTD) results in Europe and to help open up the European Research Area (ERA) to the rest of the world. This conference series is recognised as an important event in the international research calendar, attracting delegates and speakers from around the world. Formerly known as the e- Business and e-Work Conference and supported by the European Commission under the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme, the scope of eChallenges has evolved with the transition from Framework Programme Five (FP5) to Framework Programme Six (FP6). Such workshops as held in Bologna are crucial to tackle the existing European IT skills gap. The workshop did show, we are on the right track but future workshops and activities should follow to set up the required private-public partnership. CEPIS is looking forward to working closer with the European Commission and the workshop participants, to tackle the current situation on the IT labour market. In future, all participants should join forces and are encouraged to intensify their collaboration and to actively contribute to the already built partnerships, established working groups and upcoming events and conferences in 2004. I would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of all authors and workshop participants to carry out this workshop. Special thanks belong to the eChallenges e-2003 Conference, who invited CEPIS to organise this workshop in Bologna. Frankfurt, December 2003 Wolffried Stucky CEPIS Past President 5 eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future Table of Contents Wolffried STUCKY, CEPIS 9 Filling IT-Skills Gap and Shortage Marina MANZONI, European Commission 21 EU Initiatives, Policies and Research Programmes in the Area of ICT Skills Francesca BORGA, AIP – Politecnico di Milano 31 DIGI-Q project, an Innovative Approach to Introduce ICT Skills to SMEs Matthew DIXON, CEPIS 39 Information Technology Practitioner Skills in Europe Henk de VRIES, Career Space 63 Fostering ICT skills is Crucial to Europe’s Development. Based on Trends in Markets and Technology Burkart SELLIN, Cedefop 69 European ICT skills and training needs on sub-degree and vocational levels Stig ARFF, DND 79 EPICS - market validation for pan-European Certification of Informatics Professionals Finn KRISTENSEN, Inter Service ApS 87 DynamITe Dynamic ICT-training of SMEs 7 eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future W. Stucky and P. Weiß (Eds.) CEPIS, 2004 Filling IT-Skills Gap and Shortage Wolffried STUCKY1,2, Peter BUMANN1, Peter WEISS2, Ralf TRUNKO2 1CEPIS COUNCIL OF EUROPEAN PROFESSIONAL INFORMATICS SOCIETIES Stresemannallee 15, D-60596 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Tel: +49 69 6308 392, Fax: +49 +49 69 9631 5233, Email: [email protected] 2AIFB Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods, University of Karlsruhe, Englerstrasse 11, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany Tel: +49 721 608 3227, Fax: +49 721 608-6582, Email: {stucky, weiss, trunko}@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de The existing European IT skills gap is one of the biggest challenges for ICT industry during the next years. Industry, governmental bodies, and educational bodies have to intensify their co-operation and join forces to narrow the existing IT skills gap and to reduce the IT skills shortage in industry. Especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) mostly feel the increasing pressure on their future business due to a lack of available IT practitioners with the needed skills to enhance their electronic business, products and services. In this paper we discuss the terms IT skills gap and shortage and introduce an IT Competence Maturity Model as a mean to discuss and plan identified present and required future activities and measures. The model differentiates between existing qualification and certification schemes by qualification levels. The model intends to foster the understanding and to facilitate a more precise discussion of the current IT-skills situation in Europe. 1. Introduction While the significant loss of confidence – and associated downturn – in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sectors have resulted in substantial levels of personnel lay-offs by high-tech companies, this does not reduce the fundamental importance of these business sectors to future deployment, and the continuing demand for large numbers of people with relevant skills in the forthcoming years [7]. Even where industrial structure is only changing slowly, employers of ICT practitioners1 rarely find it easy to articulate their current and particularly future needed skill precisely. Consequently, experts see the existing European IT skills gap as one of the biggest challenges for ICT industry for the next years. In this context, the terms IT skills gap and IT skills shortage are discussed and used by many initiatives, although often misleadingly used in a common sense. We see a need to distinguish the terms as focused measures and activities are needed to solve the competence shortfall in industry. In order to reduce the shortage by narrowing the gap, we see the need for immediate action. Appropriate measures and activities have to be accepted European wide by the stakeholders and thus should be based on a common agreed standard. In this paper we report about past, present and future activities already launched by CEPIS and its member societies. CEPIS sets out to reduce the European IT skills gap by bringing together industry, academia, public and governmental bodies to define objectives, exchange experiences and views and to agree on appropriate future 1 The term IT practitioner is used referring to [3], page 34f. 9 eEurope - IT Skills: Challenging Europe's Economic Future activities. CEPIS is a non-profit organisation for improving and promoting high standards among informatics professionals in recognition of the impact that informatics has on employment, business and society. 2. Contribution In this paper the existing IT skills