Digital skills were never as important as now. The new Italian digital coalition aims to increase opportunities for people to find a job and to allow everyone to be ready for the digital era. With this initiative, the EU is now home to 24 National Coalitions for digital skills and jobs.
“In Italy, digital illiteracy, skills shortages, obsolete workforce competences, and poor digital civic literacy are more severe than in most other European countries", said Paola Pisano, the Minister for Technological Innovation and Digitalization (MID). "To solve these serious impediments to any digital transformation program, we are launching the National Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs within the initiative Repubblica Digitale. It is one of the actions we are taking and we will pursue to address the problem. With the Coalition, we aim to identify and engage as many stakeholders as possible, and to create the cultural change and competences improvement necessary to fully realise the benefits of digital transformation”.
MID leads Repubblica Digitale, while the coordination board that steers the initiative brings together several Ministries (e.g. Education, Work and Welfare, Economic Development, University and Research). More than 90 organisations, including businesses, municipalities, other public entities and NGOs, have already joined the coalition.
The objective of the Italian coalition is to bridge the different forms of social and cultural digital divide among the Italian population, foster digital inclusion and promote the development of skills for the works of the future. To achieve these long-term goals, the Coalition will roll-out actions to:
- Boost digital skills among all citizens, by providing them with learning and self-development tools (self-assessment kits, e-books, online courses), and help people use the new services and tools of digital citizenship actively and responsibly. For example, with the project ‘A tablet and a smile for the elderly’, older people in small towns will be offered a tablet and they will learn to use digital service with the help of young volunteers.
- Launch and increase the number of initiatives for skilling, upskilling and reskilling, through new ways of training the workforce and students. To this purpose, a first project, ‘Saturday of the Future’, has been recently launched.
- Promote the development of skills for digital and emerging technologies, for example with innovative training formats and workshops with universities, research centres and IT companies.
- Raise awareness of the importance of digital skills and digital culture, through the national broadcasting network, events and an annual contest rewarding the best initiatives.
The Members of the Italian Coalition have already launched more than 100 initiatives and this number is rapidly increasing, with more than three million potential beneficiaries. The majority of the current initiatives aims to improve basic skills for digital citizenship and 56% of the beneficiaries are citizens.
Useful links
- Home page of the new Italian Coalition
- The Coalition tweets through @InnovazioneGov
- The Coalition can be contacted via email