Saskia Van Uffelen has had a long career in IT, with multinationals such as Ericsson and Inetum. Today she focuses, amongst others, on her assignment as an ambassador for digitisation. For example, she is digital manager at technology federation Agoria, the organisation that also set up the research group ‘Be The Change’, in 2018.
“By conducting research on the evolution of the Belgian labour market, in particular the increasing labour shortage due to the lack of digital competences, we want to convince policy makers, the educational field, and other sectors and companies that training should be our top priority,” says Van Uffelen. Analyses show that by 2030 more than 500,000 jobs will not be filled due to a lack of talent.
“In order to make people available for these vacancies, we will have to automate as many processes as possible. However, it is important to stress that for every job that disappears due to automation, 2.7 new jobs are created. This is good news, but completely different competencies are needed for those new jobs.”
Digital inclusion
In another striking figure, 46% of working Belgians run the risk of being excluded in a digital world. Van Uffelen explains, “This is partly due to the fact that they have too few digital skills, are not familiar with the digital applications, or cannot afford digital products due to high energy costs, for example.”
This observation led to the creation of DigitALL, the Digital Inclusion Charter, whose signatories explicitly commit themselves to taking action and creating awareness. “By drawing attention to the offer and supporting initiatives together, we want to help solve the training problem and close the knowledge gap. Numerous initiatives already existed, aimed at all sectors, genders, knowledge levels, etc. But we assembled them within one ecosystem. The Cyber Security Coalition is also part of this.”
Connecting the dots
DigiSkillsBelgium.be is the Belgian platform that brings together all digital skills training initiatives. “Initiators can make contact, inspire each other, expand an initiative to a new location, and so on,” explains Van Uffelen. The website currently includes more than 1000 initiatives from 500 different parties. When it became clear that the parties involved in the existing initiatives did not know each other, and that citizens might not be able to get in touch with them, Saskia, as National Coalition Lead for Digital Skills, contacted the European DG Connect. This prompted the development of a 'Digital skills and jobs' platform for Europe and locally in Belgium.
“DigiSkillsBelgium.be is one of the components of a complete ecosystem in which we want to connect all digital initiatives from the Be The Change research group, to ensure that we sharpen digital skills faster and help to fill jobs, rather than waiting on the regular education system”, says Van Uffelen.
Long live learning!
The initiatives in the ecosystem are still in their infancy, partly because society still has to evolve. “We need a different culture: learning is a continuous process that helps us move forward. Lifelong learning sounds too negative to me, like a punishment. 'Long live learning!' is more appropriate and motivates to keep learning, at any age.”
“With DigiSkillsBelgium.be, we have already brought together all the initiatives regarding digital skills training. Now we have to raise awareness, make citizens aware of what is on offer and of the platform, and get the financial support to make the initiatives bigger. This is the only way we will reap the benefits of the great work that has been done so far,” concludes Saskia Van Uffelen.