The Irish Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition is an association-led, multi-stakeholder initiative bringing together 50 partners from academia and education, industry, the public, and not-for-profit sector. The primary objectives of the Coalition are to strengthen the workforce and enhance the digital inclusion of all citizens, with a special focus on the digital skills of younger adults in the context of a modernised education system.
Under a Steering Committee, the partners set several priorities, such as promoting a modern approach to teaching, upskilling the labour force, promoting professions in the information and communication technology sector (ICT) as a career choice, identifying obstacles to developing digital skills, as well as raising public and employers’ awareness of digital upskilling.
The approach is to start the movement with smaller actionable, visible projects, which bring tangible results and build the national ecosystem further. The National Coalition’s Action plan addresses the following priorities:
- Modernising educational content and teaching/training pedagogies.
- Upgrading the skills and qualifications of teachers, trainers, and other training providers.
- Enhancing cooperation and co-creation of initiatives on skills between education and industry.
- Leveraging European-level competence frameworks, such as DigComp, e-CF, etc.
- Improve citizens’ understanding of what digital skills are (including soft skills).
- Identify and prevent obstacles to acquiring digital skills, enabling diverse training approaches.
- Upskill and reskill the labour force, introducing co-skilling with the cooperation of mentors and peers.
- Stimulate employers’ responsibility to train workers towards personal growth
- Promoting lifelong learning as an approach and raising awareness of digital technology for learning.
- Improve access funding for initiatives and actions on digital skills and jobs.
- Raise awareness of ICT professions, careers, and roles.
- Enabling the development of alternative approaches to careers in ICT, making growth tracks in the field possible.