An EU-27 survey of intermediary organisations operating on the education, social and employment sectors and providing IT training has produced a first ever assessment of the e-Inclusion intermediary sector.
From the press release:
It accounts for a total of 250,000 organisations, or one e-Inclusion actor per every 2,000 inhabitants. One in two employs 10 staff or less and operates on a budget smaller than €100,000. Half of the e-Inclusion actors go further and offer employment–related training. And for two out of three, local government funding is the main financial resource.
Competence in using a computer and common office software has almost become a necessary skill to access the job market in the 21st century. About 85% of jobs in 2020 will require some sort of ICT skills, according to the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP). Moreover, there is an increasing shortage of ICT skilled labour in Europe. Digital literacy and skills hence become a pre-condition for employability.
Based on the evidence of this mapping exercise, 80% of the e-Inclusion organisations provide public access to computers, to Internet and to digital literacy training. Half of the organisations studied offer employment-related training such as online job seeking skills, application, CV development, as well as use of social media and other collaborative software.
Local governments appear to play a very important role as a funding source for e-Inclusion actors since almost 67% of organisations report this source as one of their top three. Local government funding is followed by national government funding (29%), European Union funding (25%), and usage/service fee revenue (22%) as the most important sources of funding
Close to 50% of the organisations have operating budgets of less than €100,000 and a small percentage of the organisations (11%) have budgets above €1 million. Understanding the sector which provides digital training outside formal education can help policymakers to shape guidelines for a more inclusive labour market, one of the main goals of the European Commission’s Europe 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.
Summary of the report:
This report presents the results of an online survey that collect relevant data from almost 3,000 organisations working on eInclusion in 27 European countries, which is the first attempt in Europe to collect primary data from those actors. This research constitutes a building block of a larger project ‘Measuring the Impact of eInclusion Actors on Digital Literacy, Skills and Inclusion goals of the Digital Agenda for Europe’ (MIREIA), a policy-oriented research project which aims to better understand the role of these actors across the European Union and to create adequate measurement instruments to provide evidence about how they contribute to the achievement of the Europe 2020 policy goals, from the eInclusion perspective. The findings of the analysis provide policy relevant insights and help shed light on the size of the sector, the types of organisations providing eInclusion services and their capacity (staff, budgets, funding sources and network), the services they provide and the target groups they address. In conclusion, they illustrate the key relevance of these estimated 250,000 actors in EU27 in advancing social and economic inclusion goals of the Europe2020 strategy, and in particular the digital literacy and inclusion goals of the Digital Agenda for Europe.