24 January 2018
World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab has callled for an educational system based on lifelong learning that prepares workers for the jobs of the future. PHOTO © WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM/MATTIAS NUTT
What’s described as the first ever IT industry initiative to bring competitive training content together on one platform to serve the “greater good” has been launched at the World Economic Forum (WEF) currently taking place at Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
The IT Industry Skills Initiative is committed to reaching one million people with resources and training opportunities on the SkillSET portal by January 2021.
This is a free platform of online tools that has been created to streamline the process of re-skilling adults. The initial version of the portal will be available in April 2018.
The IT Industry Skills Initiative was conceived by the WEF’s IT governors community which is chaired by Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. Its founding partners include Accenture, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cognizant, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Infosys, Pegasystems, PwC, Salesforce, SAP and Tata Consultancy Services.
Their aim is to meet the global skills gap challenge and address job displacement arising from automation and the so-called fourth industrial revolution (also sometimes referred to as 'Industry 4.0').
World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab says: “We need responsive solutions and coordination from all parts of society – governments, citizens and private industry alike – to re-envision an educational system based on lifelong learning that can fully prepare workers for the jobs of the future. This initiative is a clear example of industry leaders taking concerted, collective action to address a major social challenge at scale.”
The forum says that enabling and empowering workers to transform and update their skills is therefore a key concern for businesses and societies across the globe.
To address fast-changing skill requirements, initiative partner companies say they are opening up key elements of their individual training libraries into the single and centralised SkillSET portal
Users will have free access to the most up-to-date, self-paced training materials. These will range from general business skills and introductory digital literacy, to more advanced topics such as cyber security, Big Data, IoT, etc.
The portal will also offer a tailored skills assessment developed by PwC to help users determine which coursework and/or learning pathways best fit their current skillset and learning goals.
SkillSET is hosted on the EdCast AI-powered Knowledge Cloud platform which is accessible to anyone using desktop or mobile devices.
They partners hope to motivate adults of all backgrounds to use the platform, especially those from low-resource communities or under-represented groups who have historically had less access to the IT industry.
The initiative will initially target the US market, with plans to scale to other geographies and build industry and public-sector partnerships in 2018 and beyond.
On behalf of the partners, CA Technologies will deliver a progress report about the IT Industry Skills Initiative at the WEF’s annual meeting next year.
Michael Gregoire, the company’s CEO, says: “Technology is both the tool and the canvas and carries the huge promise of improving how we live and work. The counter side, however, is some degree of wariness by those who fear it disrupting their livelihoods, which is both understandable and expected.
“We are focused on a large-scale, proactive solution that encourages continuing education to empower and inspire today’s and tomorrow’s workforce. We must engage with technology in a way that creates new opportunities, both at an individual level and in the aggregate.”
