Open data in the European Year of Skills
2023 has been declared by the European Commission as the "European Year of Skills". A boost to lifelong learning, which puts in focus the training of people and companies to contribute to a green and digital transition and support the processes of innovation and competitiveness.
The European Year of Skills arises in a context in which it is necessary to give new impetus to the social objectives of the European Union for 2030, where they raise the need for 60% of adults to participate in training activities, as well as the goals of the Digital Compass, which seeks to reach 20 million ICT specialists employed in the EU for the same year.
Right now we are experiencing a generalized situation of lack of talent, but especially technological talent, and more than three quarters of companies in the European Union claim to have difficulties in finding workers with the necessary skills for the development of their functions. This, added to the under-representation of women in technology-related professions and studies - 1 in 5 of the people who access technological studies and 1 in 3 when it comes to science, mathematics and engineering - means that companies have to face a skills mismatch in the labor market that the EU wants to address.
In order to generate sustainable growth, greater innovation and improved business competitiveness, the European Commission will address this situation by promoting opportunities for skills upgrading and retraining.
Digital skills in the European Union
Among the skills on which the European Union is focusing this year, digital skills play a key role due to several factors. On the one hand, the population of many member countries has a very low level of digitalization with respect to what the labor market and the society in which we live demand; so the focus must be placed on this factor to help achieve objectives such as getting 70% of adults to be employed by 2030. On the other hand, the lack of trained profiles to develop ICT positions in companies and organizations generates a brake on the sustainable growth of these and the economy, being important to move towards those 20 million ICT professionals mentioned in the Digital Compass 2030.
One of the events on the calendar proposed by the European Commission for the second half of the year is the European Week of Code, which will be held from October 7 to 22 and is positioned as a grassroots initiative that brings programming and digital literacy to everyone in a fun and attractive way. A means to make technology more accessible and motivate both future professionals and current workers looking to retrain in this area.
Among the training actions carried out we have Digital Skills & Jobs Platform(https://digital-skills-jobs.europa.eu/en), a space where training and different types of content are offered to bring digital skills to users. On the other hand, the EC will also launch the Cyber Skills Academy, a space designed to increase the number of professionals trained in cybersecurity and meet the current demand in the labor market.
The importance of open data
Open Data also occupies a prominent place within the framework put in place by the European Union.
The importance of having an appropriate open data strategy for its potential to improve people's lives is something that, today, has already been established among the different agencies, mainly because of the support provided by these portals to the different Member States in the collection of data and statistics that allow them to develop specific measures and policies.
The European Union works together with the different national open data portals (datos.gob.es, in the case of Spain) to make the data available and easily accessible and understandable. In addition, it also offers support to regional and local open data portals that may have a greater need for help in digitization work. All with a clear end goal: to develop collaborative environments that make it easier for public data providers to create a smart data-driven society, with all the benefits that this can bring.
The launch of tools such as the Data Europa Academy(https://data.europa.eu/en/academy) highlight the importance of raising awareness and training in open data. This platform is a knowledge center created for open data communities to find relevant webinars and training. Within the portal, different actions are also carried out for the development of competencies where data plays a fundamental role, with workshops throughout the year.
On the other hand, and continuing with the work of evangelization, the European Data Portal also makes available to users an online training program designed to disseminate what open data is and how it is changing people's lives.
Likewise, for people who are interested in expanding their knowledge of open data, the datos.gob.es website offers training materials, monographs, case studies and infographics that will help them understand the different theoretical applications involved in open data. In addition, they also have different publications that compile free training on different topics and specializations such as artificial intelligence or data visualizations.
From the Open Data portal of the Cabildo de Tenerife we are also expanding our Training section periodically with interesting content to bring Open Data to the general public, explaining from the simplest concepts, such as what is open data or the differences between an open data portal and a transparency portal.
SOURCES: datos.gob.es | europa.eu | https://aeuropeocompetencias2023.sepe.es/