Technology – invaluable for continuous learning and recognition of prior learning

Digital skills are needed to navigate through a continuously changing terrain. Digital development is quick in today’s world, and individuals and organisations alike may struggle to keep up. Individuals should develop their digital skills throughout their lives, and organisations should take a strategic approach to skills. This way society can make the most of the potential from digitalisation.

In order for society to thrive, the learning needs of people in working age must be identified both in Finland and internationally. We also need tools and methods for acquired skills to be made visible and harnessed for proper use.

“Digital skills should be brought into a nationwide system. When people go into a new line of work, it would be easy show what their skills are. A general model to identify skills and competences is required for this,” says Sjöblom. 

Some compatible ways to identify skills have already been developed. A Government working group ‘Identifying the skills of working-age people’ project is one that has taken the initiative.

The purpose of the working group is to find tools to identify skills acquired outside the formal education system. The working commissioned a report on the matter, carried out by Demos Helsinki, Innolink and TIEKE. 

According to the report, there are already a number of tools for competence identification, but we are still far from a uniform system. In order for the existing tools and operating models to be properly adopted, skills identification must be recognised in companies’ strategic intent.

Digital skills badges are an excellent way of identifying and articulating digital skills, which is why the working group recommended in its interim report that the system of skills badges should be developed. 

There is an urgent need for circular economy skills in the labour market, which is why the governmental working group has initiated a study into and piloting of the open-badge constellation. The objective is to create a system whereby circular economy skills are identified and made visible in the labour market. 

Sjöblom says that the Open Badges for Circular Economy are particularly useful for employers that want to improve their organisation’s circular economy competence on their path to changing their organisation in that direction.

“The open badges will provide a comprehensive picture of the current state of and development needs for an organisation’s circular economy systems.”

Jenni Larjomaa, a Senior Specialist at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, says that the construction, chemical and technology industries are key circular economy players. 

According to Larjomaa, the challenge with the ‘Identifying the skills of working-age people’ project is putting it into practice. 

“We will be compiling the final report on the reports next autumn. The results of putting the system into practice will depend a lot on how that report is used.”

The skills badges represent one type of skills data for individuals. The sharing of skills data between organisations is made easier by data spaces.

At best, data spaces are extensive data areas beyond national borders that concern competence, public administration, agriculture, health, etc. The purpose of data spaces is to promote data sharing and thereby the value of data for the benefit of the European economy and society.

We should also pay attention to the benefit and use cases of data sharing in data spaces, says Headai chief business officer Anu Passi-Rauste. She says that alongside technical development, it is actually more important to test and try out various data space solutions related to skills and to disseminate the results for wider use.

Plenty of work is being done for the implementation of data spaces at the moment. Alongside this, it is vital that we create a common drive to put data sharing and data exchange into practice, says Passi-Rauste.

In Finland, TIEKE is also working on data space themes, highlighting businesses’ data space needs and helping them make better use of data spaces.

DS4Skills (Data Space for Skills) built an operating model for data sharing. This work involved Finnish operators. Currently there are new development projects in progress to implement actual data spaces for skills.

According to Passi-Rauste, Finland could be a pioneer in the development of data spaces for skills. 

The data space of competence is one example of how the EU is investing in the development and identification of digital skills. Another good example is the digital compass, a tool that provides EU-level guidelines for the digital transformation. It lists goals that promote the digitalisation of the entire society. 

Finland’s digital compass guides the country’s digitalisation development. Just like the EU-wide compass, it lists goals for promoting digitalisation. The goals have been divided into four areas: skills, infrastructure, public services, and businesses.

There is still plenty of work to do to reach the goals of the digital compass.

Digitalisation poses new challenges also to educational institutions as new areas of expertise emerge that must be covered. Educational institutions should also be able to discover students’ skills acquired outside the formal educational system.

At the Turku University of Applied SciencesSenior Lecturer in Energy and Environmental Technology Henna Knuutila says that they discover skills thought collaboration with businesses, continuing education, alumni cooperation and research and development projects.