 Good morning. I'm delighted to welcome you to our IIE webinar on digital skills in Europe. My name is Joyce O'Connor and I chair the digital group here at the Institute of International and European Affairs. And it's my great pleasure today to introduce our distinguished speaker and welcome Dr. Anne Barshott, Deputy Head of Unit in DG Connects Unit on Interactive Technologies Digital for Culture and Education. Anne, you're very welcome and we look forward to your presentation and we really appreciate you taking time out. We know of your really busy schedule to be with us and thank you very much for that. Dr. Barshott will speak to us for 20 minutes and then I will go to your audience for Q&A and you can join our discussion using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Please feel free to send in your comments or questions throughout Anne's presentation and I'll come back to you once Anne has finished her presentation. Please feel free also to join our discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. Today's presentation and Q&A are on the record. We can all see that on a daily basis, digital transformation is changing the way we work, learn, live our daily lives and participate in society. Having a digitally skilled labour force and population is critical for European competitiveness and for an inclusive digital society. The European Commission assesses that more than 90% of professional roles require a basic level of digital knowledge. Yes, around 42% of Europeans lack basic digital skills, including 37% of the workforce. The EU is targeting 20 million ICD specialists in the EU by 2030. And I think what's really important, they're targeting over 80% of the general population to have basic digital skills. Issues around gender diversity and lack of capacity in some areas of emerging technologies and a low level of integration of digital subjects with other disciplines are an area of concern. But there is a major commitment and investment by the EU and indeed Member States in the development of digital skills. We can see this vision and ambition in Ireland in our own digital, national digital strategy, harnessing digital. The part of that, there are four pillars and skills is one of the key pillars and our AI for good also focuses on skills in that area. And yesterday, Minister Harris and Covenay launched the first micro-tradential platform in Europe to accredit and facilitate the uptake of digital skills in the workforce. But the EU has developed a whole range of policies and initiatives to increase digital skills, not only in the workplace, but in the wider society for citizens and for consumers. Dr. Bashart will also discuss the range of European Commission's activities and initiatives to promote digital skills. Specifically, she will outline the Commission's plan to promote skills in key areas such as AI, data, cyber security and in the virtual reality technologies. She will also discuss the role of European Jobs and Skills Coalition and the European Skills and Skills Platform in promoting skills in the importance and the importance of grassroots initiatives such as EU Code Week. There are a lot of policies in there and I think what we're really looking forward to, Anne, is that overview of the range of activities that are being undertaken. Dr. Anne Barton is deputy head, as I said, of the Interactive Technologies, Digital and Culture and Education Unit in DG Connect. Her unit aims to support the modernization of education and training systems to support the digital transformation of culture and educational institution and to foster a wide range of extended realities technologies. Dr. Bashart holds a PhD in electrical engineering and she previously worked as head of section for robots and artificial intelligence in DG Connect and has worked as a researcher, a lecturer and a project manager. Her current areas of interest and expertise are in emerging technologies and the ethical and economic and societal aspects of technologies and the dissemination and the impact and awareness of these emerging technologies. Anne, as I said, you're very welcome. Thank you for being with us and we look forward to your presentation. Thank you, Joyce, for this lovely introduction. Good morning, everyone. I'm really delighted to be to be with you today. I mean, you can already show my slide while I'm just introducing that. I would like first to apologize because initially it was her head of unit who was supposed to talk to you, but she has been called to a high level meeting at the Council in Brussels. So it's me who will have the pleasure to talk to you. So the bad news is that you don't have all the good news is that you have me instead. So up to you to decide what it is. So as Joyce said, I will try to give you an overview of, you know, everything of what we are doing here. This is quite a lot and I realize that very often I will stay at a relatively high level in my presentation. I just hope that you will get an idea of the kind of things we have. And if you are interested, you can always either Google it or you can send us an email. I think you will manage to find more information, but you will at least have an idea of everything we do in the area of digital skills in my unit. So next slide please. I would like first to give you some introduction about the policy background of what we are doing because I mean it's just not just that at the Commission we get a unit dealing with digital skills because somebody wanted to do it is really because there is a huge political context. And I mean digital skills are really something that is high on the political agenda of the European Union and European Commission. You might be familiar with the digital decade program and targets that has been introduced already nearly two years ago. And one of the compass there is specifically targeting skills that we come to that in a minute, which shows that this is really important for the development of Europe. And also we are this year in the European year of skills. This is something that has been decided by a president underlayer. So it really shows as well that this is something that is considered as highly relevant and important for Europe. We also have a digital education action plan running already for two years until 2027, where you can find many different actions related to education and training for the digital age. This is also because it was acknowledged as being something of importance once again for Europe. And in the context of this digital education action plan, we recently had two important activities. The first one was a structured dialogue with member states and council recommendations that went with it. So we really took time to go through each member state to discuss their needs, their opportunities, the challenges and all of this fact, I mean the creation of some recommendation to improve the position of digital skills and education and training. So you can see there are really many important political background there and it's important to remember that when you have a look at all the activities that we are doing. Next slide please. I come back to this digital decade target. I mean, because it's really something which I personally find extremely intriguing when I saw the person touch the first time. The fact is that at the date of today in Europe, we only have roughly a bit more than half of the population with basic digital skills. When you see how important it is today to master digital and digital transformation in your daily life, I mean, would it be for work or for pleasure, look at today we are connected remotely. This is this is kind of an issue of use. So the target in the digital decade is that by 2030 we aim at having 80% of the population equipped with these basic digital skills. I mean, this is quite challenging because it means that in the next seven years we will have to train a lot of people, but we hope it's visible and I mean it's extremely important anyway. Another very intriguing statistics even is maybe less surprising to me is the number of employed ICT specialists. We only have roughly eight and a half million people. We would need 20 million to cover all the jobs offered by 2030. This the gap is huge because it means that we really need to train a lot of people, especially young people to become ICT specialists. So this is kind of challenging. What we have been observing in the last decade is still a gradual increase in the number of ICT specialists. But, I mean, in a proportion much higher than for total employment, but it's still not sufficient. And also where we are really, I mean, losing expertise and opportunities is that we only have less than one fifth of the ICT specialist being women. So there is a huge potential there to reach out to them and to make sure that they are interested and in a way not afraid to study ICT and to become ICT specialists. Then also, you know, we can observe then two thirds of ICT specialists in the EU had completed a tertiary level of education. So there might be room there also for improvement. I mean, I have some statistics for Ireland in particular that can be provided to me by my colleagues. Thanks to them. So basically in Ireland, ICT specialists represent 6.3% of the working population, which is basically higher than the average in Europe, which is, I mean, 4.5. So it means that you are a bit bored. You are probably not yet at what you need to be, but it shows that at least Ireland is very active in the field. You will see on the slide there that we have clearly some front runners. I mean, Sweden, Luxembourg, where I'm based. I mean, places, you know, where usually find quite a lot of ICT specialists. Some other, I mean, in Europe, unfortunately are really struggling to have some, I mean, look at Romania, Greece, Poland, the situation there, it's a bit problematic. So it means also that this is, of course, not uniform across Europe and also part of the difficulty to tackle the problem. Next slide, please. I mean, it's impossible to talk to you about everything, as I said, so I'm going to basically present to you, I mean, three different activities that we have. I will talk about some projects that we are funding in the field of advanced digital skills so that you can also, you know, consider participating to some of them. I will talk to you about the digital skills and jobs platform, which is a very useful tool that we have in place for people to have access to education and learning. And then I will talk to you about one of the successful activity that we are supporting, which is the Code Week, because, you know, that's really a way for us to also reach out to maybe younger people and a different kind of people than I usually suspect in European research projects. Next slide, please. The Digital Europe Program. The Digital Europe Program is, as you might know, a new program that has been introduced to be complementary to the Horizon Europe Program, where we are mainly doing research. In Digital Europe Program, we are doing something which is a bit more applied, it's really about deployment. And we have a whole pillar there, strategic objective four, where we exclusively deal with digital skills. Through this, we are funding quite many projects, and some of them are basically exclusively dedicated to support the design and the implementation of baccalaureate and master programs, including interdisciplinary, and the development of standard modules, not in anything you like, in some specific emerging technologies that have been carefully selected according to, you know, what is needed for the industry, what is needed for people to understand and so on. And Joyce already mentioned the key capacity areas, such as artificial intelligence, extended reality, quantum computing, and cybersecurity. So we have there calls for projects, and we already have many projects running, basically. So that's an interesting way to do it. What you have in the consortium, who are really, you know, creating these baccalaureate and master programs, are basically a mix of higher education institution of industry, including SMEs, and of excellence in virtual centres, and from different discipline at times. So that's really a huge ecosystem we are building there, a European level to really propose, you know, some training that might not be sufficiently available for the time being on the market. Next slide, please. We have a study, basically, by the GRC, which clearly shows that there is shortage of master programs in digital technologies, and this is also what motivated us to have the calls for proposal I just mentioned. But we thought it was really interesting to show you this slide in particular, because what it shows is basically that the level of EU 27, we have less master programs in key digital technologies than United Kingdom alone, and then the United States. So there is really there a big problem, because I mean, this should not be, you know, we should be at the level of United States for sure, and normally higher than a single country, or whatever country it is. So, I mean, knowing that you can really see that there was really a need for this project and to really build something around it together. Next slide. These are three project examples, just to give you a flavor of what we have there. If you are interested, you can take the name of any of these, Google or use any of your favorite, you know, search tool. And then you will find, we have DGQ, which is the digitally enhanced quantum technology master. So as I said before, we target, you know, quantum and hyperperforming computing. It's big things with 24 organizations from 10 countries. And what is interesting is that the educational resources plan to have, it's going to be multilingual. We have AI and health, where we really want to focus on, you know, I mean, the use of artificial intelligence in the health sector, because you can use AI for many things. But in the health sector, you have also some very specific needs regarding security, privacy, you know, so it's a specific domain in itself. And we have DigitWinforciUEU, which is a master on digital twins for complex infrastructures and urban ecosystems. And then it's really to support civil engineers to really, you know, work on planning for transport, cities, energy, water and environment. So as you can see, and as I said before, it can be really highly interdisciplinary. And it can also really try to fill the gaps of things that are needed for some specific experts in Europe. Next slide, please. Now I would like to guide you to one of our most successful activity, which is the EU Code Week. The EU Code Week is supported by the EU, but in fact, it started as a grassroots movement run by volunteers to promote coding, computational thinking and other digital skills. At the day of today, it's quite a wide community with 106 ambassadors, 500 teachers, 50 coordinators at national ministries all over Europe, and 3 million students from primary and high schools that have been trained and thousands of teachers. So this is really a huge success at European level. What they do is that they organize activities at local level, summer schools, hackathons. There is a new code week that we organize every week in October. You can get a school level for this. There is a teach day, train the trainer courses, MOOCs. I mean, it's really plenty of different activities with the goal to make sure that, you know, students and teachers would like to learn about coding, what they know where to go, they know when to do it, and it can be fun. Next slide, please. I mean, the number of events registered by Code Week has been steadily growing. I mean, this is really cool. Ireland last year was very active, but this year, so far, we only have seven events registered. So this is a plea as well that was transmitted to me by my colleagues in charge of the Code Week to tell you, oh, look, there is still room to do better this year. And I mean, this will happen in October. You still have time to plan things, but don't hesitate. I mean, this is really a good success. Next slide, please. And I reached the last part of this presentation, which is the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform. You have the link there. You would be interested to have a look yourself. So what is it? It's basically a kind of repository collaborative space where you can find trainings, publications, funding opportunities, pledges, I mean, plenty of different things. So, I mean, the idea is really to put the whole ecosystem, you know, in touch, that people have a place to go if they want to interact, if they want to get informed, if they want to see what is going on. I mean, this is a one-stop shop for digital skills in Europe. This is how we present it. And this is also a place where you can exchange experience, find partners, meet other people with the same interests as you. So we really have enough for a lot of activities there. And it's multilingual. So, I mean, for you, of course, it's less of a problem in Ireland because you speak English. But for many people out there in Europe, it's important also that we have resources in different languages so that, you know, you can really make use of what is there. Next slide, please. I mean, the digital skills and job platforms is also the home of the national coalition's community. So each member states as a national coalition, or most of them at least, for skills and job to create content and to publish on the platform and to organize your communications campaign. So this is a way to really go a bit more local at national level. But at the same time, we have a place through this platform where we can build things together. So this is working nicely so far. So let's see, I mean, how it goes on in the future. But this is good. For the moment, we have over 7,000 community members. We have students, professionals, policy makers. So this is continuously growing. It is open to everyone. And we have almost 2,000 contents, as I said before, events, trainings for these opportunities, publications at all levels. We have more than 600 training offers for the moment on the platform. So if you are searching for something, chances are high, you can find something relevant for you. And we also have a digital Europe program hub. So if some of you are interested in, you know, submitting a project on the digital Europe program that I mentioned previously, this is a place to be able to network with other partners and to have a place to do so much making in order to prepare proposals. Next slide, please. I mean, this platform is also organizing the digital skills work. I mean, this is the picture from the one that happened just three weeks ago, late June in Brussels. This was a kind of successful event. I mean, there were awards given in five different domains that you have on the right side of the slide. So unparalleled news, digital skills for education, inclusion, woman, digital of skilling at work. We had more than 330 entries, which means that it's kind of successful and six winners in five categories. And the winners are from private public partnerships to local grassroots projects, citizen organization, local schools, fully UConn-Socia, technical universities. So it really, I think, reflects the variety and diversity of the ecosystem here. Next slide, please. This is an important one. If you want to follow us, I mean, all the digital skills and platform. I mean, we are on all the usual social, social media and you have here the information that you need to have. We lost the slide, but it's back. And I'm here to answer your questions and to have a discussion with you all.