Abstract
A 15-partner funded project, DIGITAL4Business aims to revolutionise the digital landscape in Europe, fostering strong industry partnerships to empower digital transformation organically and providing postgraduate programmes through a unique multi-academic pan European approach. This paper identifies the needs and gaps in advanced digital skills in countries of the European Union to enable digital transformation. Validated via desk research and surveys, our results indicate that the top two advanced digital skills for companies are Cybersecurity and Cloud Computing, followed by Data Science for small and medium-sized enterprises and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for large companies, respectively. Businesses also indicate notable concerns about the digital divide, digital literacy, the potential impact of automation and job displacement, the role of regulatory frameworks, and training. Our recommendations encompass flexible and accessible education models, ex-professo AI & Data Science modules, stakeholder collaboration, and diversity & inclusion initiatives.
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Notes
- 1.
Due to page-limit constraints, the entire list of publications has not been included here but it is part of an open-access DIGITAL4Business project deliverable.
- 2.
N.B. We consolidated the areas into 8 subjects based on the results of the desk research, bringing Data Science as one topic–comprising Big Data and Analytics, Data Visualisation, and Governance–as referenced hereafter.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been developed under the auspice of “DIGITAL4Business: Master’s Programme focused on the practical application of Advanced Digital Skills within European Companies” URL: www.digital4business.eu, a project funded from Dec/2022 to Nov/2026 by the European Commission’s DIGITAL programme call: DIGITAL-2021-SKILLS-01 grant no.: 101084013.
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Somers, C. et al. (2024). Systematic Needs Analysis of Advanced Digital Skills for Postgraduate Computing Education: The DIGITAL4Business Case. In: Olney, A.M., Chounta, IA., Liu, Z., Santos, O.C., Bittencourt, I.I. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. Posters and Late Breaking Results, Workshops and Tutorials, Industry and Innovation Tracks, Practitioners, Doctoral Consortium and Blue Sky. AIED 2024. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2150. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64315-6_14
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