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e-skills and their Measurement

e-skills and their Measurement. Dr. Matthew Dixon Labour Market Adviser to CEPIS and SEMTA Visiting Research Fellow SKOPE, University of Oxford. The European e-Skills Agenda. Industry concern: 1999-2000 ICT Skills Monitoring Group (2001-2002) e-Skills Summit (Copenhagen, October 2002)

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e-skills and their Measurement

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  1. e-skills and their Measurement Dr. Matthew Dixon Labour Market Adviser to CEPIS and SEMTA Visiting Research Fellow SKOPE, University of Oxford

  2. The European e-Skills Agenda • Industry concern: 1999-2000 • ICT Skills Monitoring Group (2001-2002) • e-Skills Summit (Copenhagen, October 2002) • European e-Skills Forum (established early 2003 – Synthesis Report published Summer ’04) • Major conference in Thessaloniki (September, 2004) • Projects initiated from the Forum Synthesis Report recommendations

  3. The European e-Skills ForumSynthesis Report (September, ’04) • Develop a long-term, strategic approach • Improve planning and data availability about the ICT labour market • Promote multi-stakeholder partnerships • Design innovative e-skills training solutions • Support the development of a European ICT Skills Meta-Framework • Foster e-skills for the workforce and population at large

  4. What are e-skills? • European e-Skills Forum proposed 3 types: • ICT Practitioner Skills • ICT User Skills • E-Business Skills • OECD also proposed 3 types(!): • Basic ICT Skills • Applied/Advanced ICT Skills • Professional ICT Skills

  5. What are e-skills?

  6. What are e-skills?

  7. e-Skills Labour Markets • Labour Markets: important differences to Product/Service markets • Recruitment and Training Markets • The “supply from the (formal) Education System” • Labour Markets are occupational! • For ICT User and e-Business Skills, no real markets (more employability need and senior management briefing challenge, respectively)

  8. Key Indicatorsfrom the Rand Report

  9. Uses of Occupational Classification Frameworks • Recruitment activity • Salary Surveys • Promotional material for work in the area • Managing Technical Teams (skills management) • Career Development • Assessment of individual skills/competences, and last but not least(!) • capturing occupational structure for statistical data collection on the workforce.

  10. ISCO-88 and cross-mapping from national occupational frameworks… • The Problem • The STILE project work • Problems with NACE as well(!) • The results…!!! • What can be done? Distinguish between impossible and possible components of the problem: • Fundamental limitations of cross-mapping • Improving information, advice and guidance to cross-coders…

  11. What are Skills/Competences? • Use of Qualifications as proxy • Current thinking on Knowledge, Skills and Competences (from EQF work) • Competence vs. Qualification (Application in context/Demand vs. Supply) • The CEN/ISSS workshop on a European ICT Skills Meta-Framework: • Developed Level Descriptors from EQF Reference Levels • Showed simple but helpful structuring for ICT Practitioner Qualifications • Probed Competence<-> Qualification relationship… serious MS differences!

  12. “Data Mining” from Labour Force Surveys • Rich datasets – with central holdings from MS Quarterly LFS Response Data • Data (in principle!) on gender, age, income, employer size, main employer business activity, employment status, highest educational qualification… • Cross-tabulate all these with (ICT Practitioner) occupations • This all comes back to the quality of the occupational classification framework! • Case Study: what came out?

  13. The CASE STUDY: IT Practitioner Skills in Europe (2002) • Data for two ISCO-88(COM) Categories: Computing Professionals and Computer Associate Professionals: • Computing Professionals (ISCO 213) • “conduct research, plan, develop and improve computer based information systems, software and related concepts, develop principles and operational methods as well as to maintain .. systems .. ensuring integrity and security of data”. • Computer Associate Professionals (ISCO 312) • “provide assistance to users …., control and operate computers and peripheral equipment and carry out limited programming tasks connected with the installation and maintenance of computer hardware and software”. • THIS IS WHAT CAME OUT…

  14. CEPIS Study onIT Practitioner Skills inEurope The FUTURE? (from 2000)

  15. CEPIS Study onIT Practitioner Skills in Europe The FUTURE (as it actually turned out…)

  16. Geographical/International Dimensions • Global ICT Market (Supplier and User majors) • Growth in Outsourcing (home and away…) • Globalisation of Labour Markets as well… • Mobility both physical and “virtual” • Impact on “home” labour markets • As political reactions set in, the need for robust evidence base will grow…!

  17. Evidence needs for Policy-making: • Monitor the labour market state • Drive policy thinking from the Demand side • Trying to track serious Skill Shortages… • The responsibilities of individual, employer and state… • RoI on training investment or competition for skills… • Base policy on evidence of (labour) market failure • How to estimate future needs?

  18. Impact of ICTs in relation to e-Skills • Huge new need – for both Practitioner and User skills • The response of the (formal) Education System • Huge new business opportunities -> sector creation, and growth…. and the jobs to fuel them! • Creation of the ICT Training market

  19. Challenges in Measurement in relation to e-Skills • Can’t measure skills directly • Difficulty on getting international agreement on occupational classification • The challenge of measuring Skill Shortage • Barrier to tracking “Returns to Training” • Problems for international comparisons of coding between occupational frameworks

  20. Should we “give up and go home”? • YOUR CHOICE!... • but • Here are some things we could do, if we decided that tracking occupations really matters for the Knowledge Economy:

  21. Making a difference in the Quality of Occupational data… • Provide guidance and support for National Statistical Office LFS data coding to ISCO • Take the updating of ISCO seriously, and push hard for appropriate categories for ICT Practitioners • Exploit other surveys whenever we can (both for e-skills and e-skills training data)! • Recognise that getting better data will cost – in particular, through larger sample sizes – and some question refinement - for LFS • If we mean business, fight for that resource! • In the meantime, drive new primary research from specific, rather than general, e-skills policy questions

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