e-CF Multistakeholder partnership driving ICT professional up-skilling and pick up of employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

e-CF Multistakeholder partnership driving ICT professional up-skilling and pick up of employability

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Sector Skills Alliances in vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers; Recognition, transparency, certification

Project Summary

eCF Council project established a transnational stakeholder Alliance of reference, the eCF Alliance, built upon concrete shared goals, tools and services for e-competences and IT occupation enhancement and based on a common reference scheme for vocational qualifications and certification, compliant with the European eCompetence Framework, and the ESCO IT occupations, thus ensuring transparency and comparability.PartnershipThe eCF Sectoral Skills Alliance included 16 partners and 2 supporting organizations from 5 Countries (Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium). Partners belong to three categories: VET providers, regulatory bodies and sectoral organizations. The Bulgarian partners are co-founders to the Digital National Alliance for the promotion of digital competences and jobs. The Italian partners are involved in the National Agency for Digital Italy to align the VET offer against the needs of the Public Administration and IT SMEs. Authorities in Spain are promoting a significant number of VET courses to retrain workers for joining the ICT sector. The Dutch partners have been working at the IT professionalism issue, experimenting implementations of the e-CF framework.Sector needsEven if the ICT is the most advanced sector in terms of standardization and records a low unemployment rate at European level, at national levels there is an unbalanced situation. The Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs reports that “At a time when Europe faces massive unemployment, technology companies face a critical shortfall of talented ICT experts”. This contradictory picture reveals a mismatch between the skills on offer and on demand. Sectoral organizations reveal that Companies and SMEs need harmonisation of e-skills curricula at EU level ensuring VET mutual comparability and the required workforce mobility.ObjectivesThe objectives of this project were to analyse national frameworks, find both a scheme and experimented tools to compensate the mismatch in the ICT sector, experiment the design and piloting of competence based training paths. eCF Alliance delivered the following shared tools and outcomes: – A common reference scheme for vocational qualifications and certifications- A set of EQF-based Learning Units (reference e-CF3.0)- A web training platform and the training contents related to the Learning Units, feeding the e-CF COUNCIL open content repository- A pilot joint vocational qualification model based on the e-CF COUNCIL scheme- A transnational pilot blended training, including an initial assessment of competences and prior learning- An assessment and certification process- A set of workshops at national level and a Final Conference involving sector stakeholders- IPR recommendations and the eCF Alliance exploitation strategyImplemented activities and outcomesIn the first half of the project lifespan and after the preparatory phase, these objectives were pursued by starting with the identification of 15 e-competences form the e-CF 3.0 and the revision of the qualification and certification standards. These mainly concerned the design of the training program and the pilot experience aiming to test both the training paths and the certification process. During the second half of the project lifespan, the partnership has been engaged in the production of the Open Contents for the second set of the selected competences and the design and implementation of the training platform to deliver the related courses and start the pilots. Partners organized national workshops to discuss the effectiveness of the competence-based training and the expectations from the ICT job market. The implemented pilot paths allowed the certification of 140 trainees and highlighted the model’s critical issues as well as possible solution strategies. An external and passionate internal discussion brought to the exploitation model of the eCF Council, aiming to offer sustainability to the eCF Alliance.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 857456 Eur

Project Coordinator

FONDAZIONE POLITECNICO DI MILANO & Country: IT

Project Partners

• ADFOR SPA
• FEDERAZIONE IMPIEGATI OPERAI METALLURGICI REGIONALE LOMBARDIA
• FONDATSIYA EVROPREYSKI SOFTUEREN INSTITUT – TSENTAR IZTOCHNA EVROPA
• SDRUZENIE BULGARSKA ASOCIACIA NA SOFTUERNITE KOMPANII BASCOM
• DIGITALEUROPE AISBL
• BITA CENTER BV
• CIONET NEDERLAND BV