EU election: What are ‘digital skills’ – but where is Germany?
The EU wants to get its digitalization up to speed by 2030. One cornerstone: Digital skills. Germany has some catching up to do.
A little smile is allowed when you click through the European test for digital skills: Does it make sense to create a backup of your own data? What happens when you press CTRL+V in File Explorer? How do you move files to other folders or to the cloud? If you take the answers for granted, you can boast that you are one of the 49% of Germans who have at least basic digital skills. The flip side: the other half of the population lacks them.
This is the conclusion of the DESI 2023, the index for the digital economy and society, which the EU uses to measure the progress of its policy program "Towards the Digital Decade". By 2030, the EU member states should have adapted to the challenges and opportunities of the digital age in four areas - Human Capital, Digital Infrastructures, Integration of Digital Technology and Digital Public Services.
Click here for the official self-test.
Amateurs and specialists
One of the four indicators of the policy program focuses on the education of the population, i.e. human capital: 80 percent of adults across the EU should be able to use digital technology for their everyday tasks. In addition, there should be at least 20 million ICT (Information and Communication Technology) specialists by the end of the decade. The umbrella term describes trained people whose work consists of developing, operating or maintaining telecommunications devices, hardware and software. In 2022, the EU had around 9 million such specialists, almost a quarter of whom came from Germany.
At this point, a gap opens up: The number of highly qualified ICT specialists is increasing at a rapid rate across the EU - it has grown by more than half since 2012. Of course, the member states are also trying to promote the training of such specialists for economic reasons. At the same time, there are citizens who really don't know anything about digital technology. For them, the EU plans to train "digital skills" - but what does the term actually mean?
What are "digital skills"?
In 2017, the EU overhauled its "Digital Competence Framework", in which it describes how it assesses digital skills. It divides these into five areas, in each of which a level of knowledge can be achieved. This is divided into eight levels, from complete beginner to specialist. The five areas of digital competence are as follows:
- Information and data understanding
This is about how well you can understand and search digital content, how easily you can access information and whether you can recognize false information.
- Communication and collaboration
Interaction in the digital space, i.e. in social media, on message boards or collaboration platforms and the sharing of digital content are the focus here, but also how well you handle your digital identity and whether you have internalized classic netiquette.
- Creating digital content
This field revolves around the ability to create or reuse content in the digital space yourself. Knowledge of copyright and basic programming skills also belong in this area.
- Security
This area covers whether you can effectively protect your data, your privacy and your devices. The field also covers how you can protect your own health and your environment when you are in the digital space.
- Problem solving
Finally, the EU assesses whether you are capable of solving technical problems. This also includes identifying necessary measures and being able to inform yourself in the event of knowledge gaps.
The degree of competence in one of the five areas is then determined by three factors: How complex are the tasks? How autonomously can they be mastered? And which cognitive domain is used for this?
Where does Germany stand?
In an EU comparison, Germany performs rather poorly: Only 49 percent of Germans have basic "digital skills" - in the EU as a whole, the figure is 53 percent. This puts Germany in 23rd place out of 28 member states. And while 27% of the EU population have mastered more than the basics, only 18% of Germans do - only Romania and Bulgaria fare worse with less than 10%. Finland and the Netherlands top the tables - so there is still plenty of room for improvement.
However, when it comes to promoting digital skills, Germany also tends to focus on further training in the workplace. There is certainly movement in this direction, the "Work of Tomorrow Act" is just one example. This provides subsidies from the employment agency for further training and courses. The crux of the matter, however, is that Germany relies on its medium-sized companies to activate funding pots - in corresponding publications, the concept is concealed behind the term "lifelong learning". This places the responsibility for education mainly on the citizens instead of ensuring change from above. The €5 billion Digital Pact for Schools, which dates back to the Covid era, was actually intended to achieve this. Germany wanted to use it to directly meet EU requirements and digitally overhaul its educational infrastructure. However, only around two billion euros of the funding has been used so far, although it was set to run until 2024.
The role of the European Union
However, this infrastructure is urgently needed in order to implement the requirements set out by the EU in its Digital Education Action Plan (DEAP). For example, the plan provides for IT lessons in primary and secondary schools and is dedicated to "blended learning" - i.e. the use of digital technology for school operations, such as video modules, gamification or remote teaching. As part of the action plan, the EU has already developed a handbook for teachers that focuses on promoting digital skills, SELFIEforTEACHERS is an online tool for teachers who want to use digital opportunities in the classroom and the European School Education Platform is researching the challenges of digital education - such as the recent use of AI in the classroom. So the foundations are already in place, all that is needed now is a bridge between the material, teaching staff and the EU's offerings. It is clearly not enough to simply place boxes of tablets in classrooms, as has been the case to date.
The EU has almost 26 billion euros available from the Erasmus+ program, which provides funding for the majority of EU education initiatives. There is also a consensus among the major EU political groups - the EPP, S&D and the Greens - that Erasmus+ should be strengthened and expanded in the future. However, the latest survey from 2022 shows that Germany is putting most of the money (185 million euros) into funding projects in the field of higher education. Only a fraction of 37.5 million euros flows into the promotion of school education.
If we venture a cautious outlook, we can guess that the right-wing conservative EPP will make less of an effort to close the gap if it wins the elections. It stands for subsidiarity in the education system, which means that responsibility lies with the member states and not primarily with the EU. The social-democratic S&D group places a somewhat greater emphasis on including socially disadvantaged sections of the population and sees digital education primarily as the basis for the political participation of the individual. Both groups are also concerned that a lack of digital education opens the door to misinformation and disinformation campaigns. For the 2024 elections, however, the current digital literacy of the EU population, which is in need of improvement, will probably have to suffice.
(kki)
