Roundtable Meeting in Norwich - 7 April 2011

In the context of the Pro Internet project, a Roundtable Meeting on the “Needs of the Internet Industry Making Offer and Demand meet in Training and Education” took place in Norwich on 7 April 2011.

Its main conclusions were:

• The most exciting prospects for new job creation are in combining traditional skills and competences with internet-based skills and competences.
• Managers in large and small organisations still need to become fully aware of the opportunities in using/implementing the internet in their relevant business/organisational processes.
• Intensified collaboration between training institutions and prospective employers is necessary and should be facilitated by government.
• A proper investigation into what is exactly meant by “soft skills” needs to be carried out.
• Employers call for highly specialist and modular trainings. Training institutions should follow this call. Governments should facilitate the process with light rather than heavy-handed intervention.
• An information exchange platform at European level as a best/good practice transfer mechanism and a means to provide comparability of approaches, methods, frameworks and outcomes is useful.
• Attempts to develop a labelisation, certification and normalization activity at European level must be envisaged over the long-term and must secure the buy-in of national labelisation, certification and normalization processes.
• Collaboration with e-Skills UK, the STEM Centre and the Hotsource network should be explored.

 The full summary can be downloaded here.