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Europe is banking on digital growth but could end up being sidelined

ith his father sitting beside

him, Juan is trying to follow
the teachers instructions
to build his own website using HTML
code. Two hours, three photos and four
links to other sites later, his mission is
accomplished.
Fourteen-year-old Juan is more used to
sitting behind a screen playing Minecraft
than writing code. But nonetheless he
described spending his Saturday afternoon
at the coder-dojo in the Sans Soucis
library in Brussels as super.
Our aim is not to train software developers, but to give young people the desire to
find out what is happening on the other side
of the screen to spark their curiosity,
says Ravi Thanikaimoni, an engineer and
volunteer. Just because young people
today are practically born with a tablet in
their hands doesnt mean they are pre-

66

| SPRING 2015 | EUROPOLITICS No 8

pared for a digital world. They need to move

out of their passive role, he explains.
In January 2015, over 370 workshops like
this were held in the EU 1, aiming to encourage young people between seven and 17 to
learn computer programming and raise
awareness among their parents of the
importance of digital skills for the future.
The stakes are high: more than 900,000
jobs will be vacant in Europe by 2020 due
to a lack of skills, the Commission emphasised at the launch of its Grand Coalition
for Digital Jobs in March 20132. Some of
these will require knowledge of coding.
That is why the UK, Estonia and Finland are
now teaching children computer programming from primary school onwards.
According to a European Schoolnet survey,
12 European countries have already introduced programming into secondary education, while a further seven are planning

to do so. A whole new army of coders is

being trained up, just as twentieth century
schools produced legions of civil servants.
It is not only about programming. A major
element of the skills deficit lies in analysing digitally generated data. Profiling
potential clients according to their internet
searches, analysing sensors to manage
energy and bio-computing employment
sites already abound in advertisements for
these jobs for candidates capable of transforming algorithms into golden egg-laying
geese. Job offers in this sector should
increase by 245% by 2020, the Commission
said last year, at the publication of a communication called Towards a thriving
data-driven economy 3.
Information technology already accounts
for 10% of jobs in Europe, with an increase
of 20% over ten years. This is only the tip
of the iceberg. The future depends less on

E-JOB

2.8% Percentage of

59% Percentage of

internet users specialised

in ITC

internet users having basic

IT knowledge
Source: DESI 2015

skilled specialists than on the digitalisation

of the entire economy, says Jonathan Murray, director of DigitalEurope, an association representing the digital sector in
Brussels. Business schools should not
train company directors to repair their
computers as I have witnessed, but rather
to understand the process, and changes
to the value chain. In other words, they
should rely on maintaining, rather than
producing, connected objects. In this new
industrial revolution, there are clearly winners and losers. Almost 47% of jobs in the
United States are under threat, Oxford
researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and
Michael Osborne stated in a report published in Oxford in 20134 and Europe is no
better off. According to a study carried out
by Roland Berger consultants in 2014, by

2025 three million jobs in France involving

repetitive intellectual tasks will be under
threat from digital.
The Oxford researchers say haulage could
be replaced with driverless cars using
robots, nursing of patients in intensive care
could be done using sensors, automatic
procedures used instead of workers for
dangerous jobs in construction, mines and
agriculture, and even financial analysts
could be ousted by new technology.
Who, then, will be the winners? In the end,
there will not be many: retailers whose
dedication cannot be replicated by robots,
maintenance specialists and, above all,
creatives those with social skills who can
combine ideas in an unusual way. These

attributes cannot be replaced by artificial

intelligence, say Frey and Osborne. They
conclude that workers should acquire creative and social skills if they want to survive
in the future job market. It remains unclear,
however, whether schools in Europe are
really ready to meet this challenge.

B)*+,-+./01,0/203
1. https://coderdojo.com/
2. http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/grandcoalition-digital-jobs-0
3. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/
communication-data-driven-economy
4. Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2013). The future
of employment: how susceptible are jobs to
computerisation?. Retrieved September, 7, 2013.

SKILLSET TRENDS (2013-2020) CIO Perspectives

Most likely to grow

4
57898

ata visualization (83%)

Information security (80%)
xperience design (74%)

Source: primary research, 2013

Most likely to be offshored

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Software testing (45%)

CT Support (40%)

Least likely to be offshore

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ormation security (81%)

Enterprise architecture (76%)
CT Supplier Management (76%)

8 EUROPOLITICS | SPRING 2015 | 67