Deze studie is voltooid door Empirica voor de Europese Commissie in januari 2008. Het belangrijkste doel was om het bestaande beleid en de initiatieven in Europa omtrent multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSP) op het gebied van eSkills te meten.

De resultaten van dit onderzoek betreft onder andere een inventarisatie van MSP voor eSkills-ontwikkeling en gerelateerd beleid, gebruikmakend van een netwerk (www.enir.org) van nationale correspondenten van alle EU-lidstaten en Kroatië, IJsland, Noorwegen en Turkije. Zij brengen transparantie naar de IT practitioner training en certificatiemarkt. Aanbevelingen hebben met name betrekking op legale, financiele en institutionele frameworks voor de ontwikkeling van schaalbare en duurzame MSP.

Het rapport presenteert de belangrijkste vindingen van dit onderzoek. Er worden twintig case studies beschreven. Dit rapport is, tevens als de kennisdatabase van de best practice beschrijvingen, beschikbaar op de website: www.eskillspolicy-europe.org.

The analysis revealed that multi-stakeholder partnerships for e-skills are increasingly becoming commonplace in Europe. There is a steady development of multi-stakeholder partnerships and they widely exist in different forms and facets. The majority of these initiatives are targeting citizens to help them achieve and further develop their digital literacy (i.e. basic e-skills). Well-focused types of schemes and initiatives addressed specifically to the further e-skills development and certification for IT practitioners (i.e. professional and advanced e-skills) have been identified in all European countries. The main focus of the study was on the latter type of multi-stakeholder partnerships, but some key results of all different types are briefly presented before concentrating on a more detailed elaboration of the results on the e-skills multi-stakeholder partnerships. They can be distinguished according to the target groups being addressed and the type of e-skills to be provided and/or further developed. These are mainly addressed to the:

1. Citizens for digital literacy improvement to increase their employability;

2. Public education system like universities, high schools, colleges and vocational schools offering e-skills development through vendor-based e-skills training and certification activities and ranging from awareness and promotion activities, initiatives to make these offers an integral part of the study programme, to multi-stakeholder partnerships offering and running such training courses and certification opportunities;

3. IT practitioners including well known and widely recognised vendor-based schemes, but also those developed by different groups of stakeholders, as part of multi-stakeholder partnerships with the aim to establish vendor-independent e-skills schemes.

Quantitatively, the majority of initiatives are addressed to citizens and include digital literacy activities aiming at basic e-skills provision to individuals of different types (e.g. unemployed, disabled people, special needs groups etc.). Some of them aim to increase their employability in an information-based economy. Initiatives with a strong focus on improving the employability of the workforce are of relevance for the study and have been analysed in more detail. These range from the national activities of the "European Alliance on Skills for Employability" launched by IT vendors and other stakeholders under the umbrella of the Corporate Social Responsibility Alliance (CSR) in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the United Kingdom, but also to large-scale ECDL initiatives. Some of these have been selected for further analysis and description.