In a press conference held at CeBIT, high-level representatives from three IT-related groups, which were DigitalEurope, an European information and communications technology (ICT) industry association, and BITKOM, the German ICT industry association, as well as a Bonn-based consulting firm "empirica," presented facts and figures about Europe's digital future.
European labor market may face a great shortfall of 384,000 ICT practitioners by 2015, while only 10 percent of economic sector would not require e-skills at that time, the three groups said, according to a foresight study.
"Europe could lose an important competitive advantage if we do not fully capitalized on the ability of the digital industry," Bridget Cosgrave, Director-general of DigitalEurope, said. "The burning issue for Europe is to build an adequately e-skilled workforce."
The digital industry has the capacity to create 400,000 new jobs in Europe in the next five years, with the increasing application of ICT solutions, such as e-health, e-government, e- learning, and e-business, the survey predicted.
However, the numbers of young people who enrolled on computer science have been sliding since 2003 in Europe, causing a decline in graduates.
"Germany is affected strongly by the e-skills gap," Bernhard Rohleder, Director General of BITKOM, said. "Even at the height of th
He believed the gap had turned from cyclical to "structural," which may hinder Germany's innovation capacity.
"An adequately e-skilled workforce is necessary to drive Europe 's economy forward," Werner Korte, an expert from empirica, said. "ICT practitioner jobs are highly resistant to the crisis, with unemployment rates 40 to 50 percent lower than general ones."
Three European Commissioner Antonio Tajani, Neelie Kroes and Androulla Vassiliou said in a joint statement that the continent's education and training systems were to be blamed on the learner decline, which have not kept up with the fast-moving trends of the digital world.
British Computer Society chief executive David Clarke said earlier that youngsters had received poor teaching in IT classes, which made them lose interest quickly in the science. "It's taught as secretarial, and IT seems to be boring (for students)," he said.
CeBIT 2010, the world's leading digital industry expo, is open to the public from march 2-6 in the German central north city of Hanover. With the theme of "Connected Worlds," the annual trade fair since 1986 have attracted 4,157 companies from 68 countries this year.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Li Xianzhi
Quelle/Source: Xinhua, 03.03.2010
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