Digital Skills Office
The Digital Skills Office
was established at the OeAD as the National Agency for Education and Internationalisation in the context of the Digital Skills Initiative Austria to operationally advance the goal of "making everyone digitally fit". This initiative is supported by the Federal Chancellery (BKA), 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
Austria Wins Gold for Digital Überall
Austria’s Digital Skills Initiative (DKO) earned first place in the "Administration Transformation" category at the prestigious "eGovernment-Wettbewerb" by BearingPoint and Cisco in September. This competition measures e-government progress in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and rewards innovative projects that drive sustainable modernisation of public administration. This year, Austria's DKO impressed the jury with its user-focused approach. The Digital Überall programme, organised by the Digital Skills Office, offers over 4,500 free workshops in communities to help citizens use and understand digital technologies safely.
Publication: Austrian Framework of Reference for Digital Competence
The National Framework of Reference, based on Austria's DigComp 2.3 AT competence framework, provides a groundbreaking foundation for transparency, comparability, and guidance in the field of digital skills. This marks a significant step forward for Austria and supports a wide range of stakeholders committed to promoting digital skills.
More information and details can be found on the Digital Austria Competence Platform.
The office’s tasks:
Digital Überall Workshops
The focus of the Digital Skills Initiative is to increase basic digital skills. To achieve this the Digital Überall (Digital everywhere) programme was created, which offers free workshops for digital beginners that are organised by various adult education providers all over Austria.
A total of 4,500 free Digital Überall workshops will be organised to support people with digitisation. These are held on the topics of digital education for senior citizens, e-government, security on the internet, living with increasing digitisation and artificial intelligence.
You can find the workshops offered by Digital Überall here and book workshops directly with the adult education providers (online or by telephone). New workshops will be added on an ongoing basis.
Since the end of June 2024 municipalities have also been able to book up to 3 free workshops. The process is simple and unbureaucratic: after selecting a Digital Überall workshop, the municipality submits a booking request to the adult education provider via the booking platform. A date is then agreed upon. All the municipality has to do is provide a suitable venue and take care of promoting the workshop to prospective participants.
Development of a National Framework of Reference for Digital Competence
Another task of the office is to develop a National Framework of Reference for Digital Competence, including the development of a handbook for education and training providers to map their curricula and course offers to the DigComp competence framework.
The National Framework of Reference, based on the DigComp 2.3 AT model, acts as a tool to describe and compare digital skills and qualifications. With its implementation, digital skills of different target groups can be visualised and their gaps be identified. Formal educational offers are currently being mapped to enable an overview of education and training offers and to make digital skills measurable and comparable.
Expert Platform
The office has taken over the coordination and management of a new expert platform into which the previous taskforce (led by BMF and fit4internet) has been integrated. The members of the expert platform are leading specialists in the areas of education and training, science and research, business and public administration and various interest groups.
The meetings cover topics such as:
- Continuous development of the digital competence framework for Austria
- Initiation and implementation of projects, e.g. development and implementation of a National Framework of Reference for Digital Competence
- Contribution of expertise to a wide range of projects
Completed projects:
Pilot Project Digital Skills For All
The Digital Skills Initiative Austria focuses on increasing basic digital skills. As an immediate measure the pilot project Digital Skills for All was implemented and evaluated by the Digital Skills Office in the autumn of 2023.
From October to December 2023 Digital Skills for All carried out around 800 free workshops for digital beginners all over Austria, reaching more than 8,500 participants.
A total of 36 education providers carried out workshops in 209 Austrian municipalities on the topics of digital education for senior citizens, e-government and safe use of digital media for parents and teenagers.
You can download the evaluation report here.
Quality Guideline for Digital Skills Education and Training Offers
In the course of the pilot project Digital Skills for All a quality guideline for basic digital skills education and training offers was created by the Digital Skills Office.
Download the guideline here (in German).
Pilot Project European Digital Skills Certificate (EDSC)
From May to December 2023 Austria took part in the pilot project European Digital Skills Certificate (EDSC), in which the Digital Skills Office acted as the national coordination partner. Finland, France, Romania and Spain were also among the five pilot countries in addition to Austria.
The project focused on the national consolidation for the potential feasibility of an EU-wide digital skills certificate. A final report was written by the office and submitted to the European Commission.
