The Digital Skills Office
was established at OeAD - National Agency for Education and Internationalisation in the context of the Digital Skills Initiative for Austria (DKO) to contribute to the goal of the nationwide campaign: Getting everyone digitally fit. The initiative is led by a consortium of four ministries: the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF), the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy (BMAW), the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the Federal Ministry of the Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES).
The OeAD acts as central office and provides operational support for the Digital Skills Initiative.
News
Digital Überall: Tender for the Provision of Workshops to Promote Digital Basic Skills
Within the framework of the program "Digital Überall," the planning, organisation, and implementation of workshops aimed at imparting digital basic skills to adults are now being tendered. Each workshop consists of 3 teaching units, with approximately 3,700 workshops initially commissioned.
Further information and details on the tender can be found on the procurement platform: ANKÖ - Bekanntmachungen (vergabeportal.at)
Submissions must be in German. The deadline for submissions is May 21, 2024, at noon.
Invitation to Submit Bids for the Evaluation of "Digital Überall" Workshops
We invite interested organisations to submit bids in German for the external evaluation of workshops within the "Digital Überall" programme by May 21, 2024, at 08:00 a.m.
For further information, please click here: Invitation to Submit Bids.
Current projects:
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Free workshop offer Digital Überall
The Digital Skills Initiative focuses on increasing basic digital competencies in Austria. To support this goal, we created Digital Überall: nationwide free workshop offers for digital beginners, provided by a range of adult education organisations.
Phase one runs from March to June 2024, with about 800 workshops on basic digital competencies, by 54 educational providers. The workshops focus on five main topics: digital education for senior citizens, e-government, online safety, living with digitisation, and artifical intelligence.
To find out more about the workshop offers and book a workshop directly with a provider, please visit our workshop database. New workshops will be added on a regular basis.
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Development of a National Reference Framework for Digital Skills
Another task of the office is to develop a National Reference Framework for Digital Skills including the development of a handbook for educational organisations to reference their curricula and course offers to the DigComp competence model.
The national reference framework, based on the DigComp 2.3 AT model, will act as a tool to describe and compare digital competencies and qualifications. With its implementation, digital skills of different target groups can be visualised and their gaps be identified. Formal educational offers will be referenced to enable an overview on education and training offers in the area of digital competencies and to make digital skills measurable and comparable.
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ExpertInnenplattform
The office has taken over the coordination and management of a new expert platform into which the existing Taskforce (led by the BMF and fit4internet) has been integrated. The members of the expert platform are leading experts in the areas of education, science and research, business and public administration and various interest groups.
The meeting topics cover issues such as:
- Digital competence model for Austria
- Initiation and implementation of projects, e.g. National Reference Framework for Digital Competence
- Contribution of expertise to and discussion of projects of the Digital Skills Office
Completed projects:
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Pilot project Digital Skills For All
The digital skills campaign focuses on increasing basic digital skills. As an immediate measure the pilot project "Digital Skills for All" has been planned, implemented and evaluated by the Digital Skills Office in 2023.
From October til December 2023 free workshops were offered all over Austria within the pilot initiative "Digital Skills for All".
Within the framework of this initiative, basic digital skills were taught by exploring new meeting points and places in municipalities and following an outreach strategy to organise courses in places citizens frequent regularly. The aim of this was to reach all those target groups who do not attend formal learning centres.
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Quality guidelines for educational programmes in the field of basic digital skills
During the pilot project "Digital Skills for All", quality guidelines for providers of digital skills courses was created to ensure the application of standards in the offers. Download the quality guidelines here.
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Pilot project European Digital Skills Certificate (EDSC)
The Digital Skills Office was part of a pilot project regarding a European Digital Skills Certificate (EDSC) from May to December, representing Austria among the four other pilot countries Finland, France, Romania and Spain. During the pilot project, national stakeholders were consulted with regards to the feasibility of a european certificate for digital skills. The end report was written by the office and sent to the European Commission in December 2023.