The introduction of a new European standard for ICT professionals has been said by CEPIS (The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies) to be a step in the right direction for helping to solve the lack of e-skills throughout Europe.
Publication
On 6th April, the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) published the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF), which has now become the European standard for IT professionals. The framework describes the competences and skills that IT professionals are now required to have.
CEPIS Secretary General, Fiona Fanning, said: “Organisations must be able to understand the core areas of ICT expertise required by different roles, in order to recruit and develop suitable employees, and maintain adequate levels of competences. The e-CF is the ideal tool to support organisations in doing so. It will help tackle Europe’s alarming ICT skills gap. Previously, there was no way to express ICT competences and skills requirements and gaps on a European level.”
Its purpose
In term of hiring, when its comes to the selection of candidates as well as their training and the general assessment of IT professionals, the e-CF was designed to provide clear definitions to support the decision making.
For example, a large company could use the e-CF to develop an in-house tool to help manage the process of training. The e-CF could serve as a consistent benchmark to assess training programmes, while addressing the individual development needs of trainees.
Implementation
The e-CF was developed under CEN Workshop on ICT Skills, through a collaborative process that took place between stakeholders and experts. The national standards bodies of the 33 CEN-CENELEC members will now begin implementing the framework at national level.
Edited from a press release by Jordan Platt.
