Developing e-Skills for Competitiveness, Growth and Employment in 21st Century: The European Perspective

Modern economies are driven by skilled people, who create and use the technology. e-Skills has been considered as a perquisite for employment in every sectors. Though the Europe is home to world class technology companies and IT savvy people, existing studies revealed that there is a widespread recognition in the EU of an expanding gap between demand and supply of e-Skills. Far from being an ICT sector issue, Europe's growing e-skills shortage is affecting productivity and the competitiveness of all types of organizations. Further, due to lack of e-skills, millions of European citizens are not able to access ICTs. Their inability to access ICTs deprives them to reap the benefits of ICTs. Added to these, facing competition from the US and Japan but also increasingly from India and China, Europe needs more highly e-skilled professionals of its own. Europe's education and training systems have not kept up with the exploding demand for e-skills. This has initiated, at different levels, a policy debate about how to better promote e-skills in Europe, in order to fully reap the potential benefits of ICTs. In this light, the present paper explore some key issues related to development of e-Skills, while attempting to provide some benchmarking tools by which European countries may be able to access their current and future challenges regarding e-skills.