Italy - National Strategy for Digital Skills

The Italian Strategy for Digital Skills is aimed to fight the cultural digital divide affecting the Italian population through supporting digital inclusion, to support the e-skills development throughout the higher education and training cycle, to promote key competences development for the future and increase the percentage of ICT specialists (especially in emerging technologies). Another objective is to ensure that the entire working population has basic digital skills for the new needs and ways of working.

This Strategy has been drafted jointly with the collaboration of Ministries, Regions, Provinces, municipalities, universities, research institutes, companies, professionals, the National Public Broadcasting, associations and the various public sector organizations, the organizations belonging to the National Coalition, and with the informal exchanges with the European Commission, under the direction of the Technical Steering Committee of the 'Repubblica Digitale' initiative and the coordination of the Department for Digital Transformation. It develops some of the objectives of the 2026 Digital Italy strategy of the Minister for innovation and digital transition.

The strategy identifies four lines of intervention, coherently with the four pillars of the European Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs:

• Higher Education and Training - for the development of e-skills for young people within the mandatory education cycles (working group is coordinated by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of University and Research)
• Active workforce - to ensure adequate e-skills in both the private and public sectors, including e-leadership skills (working group is coordinated by the Ministry of Economic Development and Department for Public Administration)
• ICT specialist skills - to enhance the country's ability to develop skills for new markets and new jobs, with a specific focus on emerging technologies and key competencies for future jobs (working group is coordinated by the Ministry of University and Research and the Ministry of Economic Development)
• Citizens - to develop the digital skills needed to exercise citizenship rights and promote active participation in the democratic life (working group is coordinated by the Department for Digital Transformation).

For each line of intervention are associated priorities and lines of action. The Strategy has then been complemented by an Operational Plan including targets for 2025, based mainly on both DESI and Eurostat indicators like the following:

• Equip 70% of the population with at least basic digital skills and bridge the gender skills gap in the ICT sector. 
• To double the rate of Italian citizens with advanced digital skills (78% of young people with higher education, 40% of workers in the private sector and 50% of civil servants). 
• Increase the number of graduates in ICT three times; and four times for the number of female graduates, and increasing twofold the share of companies active in the field of big data. 
• Double the share of companies that uses big data; and double the employment of digital experts and ICT specialists in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). 
• Increase five times in the share of the population using public digital services (64%). 
• Increase in the use of the Internet and the ability to use computers also for older people: 84% in the 65-74 age group.

The Plan addresses the 41 lines of action identified in the Strategy through 111 actions and provides a dashboard of over 60 indicators to monitor the impact on the 4 lines of intervention. Each action also includes appropriate milestones, result indicators and target values. The dashboard is based on the indexes included in the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) of the European Commission and the Digital Maturity Indexes (DMI) elaborated by the Digital Agenda Observatory.

The monitoring model of the Plan allows to update the operational plan on a six-monthly basis, evaluating  the general impact of the whole plan and the effectiveness of the actions and improving them where necessary, and considering the ever-changing context according to the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) continuous improvement model.

Two community-led events also took place: on 2 and 16 December 2020. The Community-led events provided an opportunity for the National Coalition to present the Strategy and Implementation Plan to all its members and beyond, highlighting the most relevant actions. The Outcome Paper from the Community-led event can be downloaded below.