OKTOBER 4th 2008
BLED, SLOVENIA
Sponsor of the conference: President of Slovenia, Mr. Danilo Turk, PhD
Organizators of the conference: representatives of professional IT Associations of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Portugal, Austria and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Guests: ECDL representatives – European Computer Driving Licence Foundation from Dublin. At traditional annual regional Conference on IT literacy, with the presence of the Slovenian Government representatives and numerous schools and institutions that are dealing with this problem in the region, the newest accomplishments, history and current activities of all the participating countries were presented. Our country was presented by JISA – Union of ICT Societies.
In their introductory lectures guests from ECDL-F, Dublin, Piotr Mrozinski - Regional Development Executive and Julian Seymour - Business Operations Manager, emphasizes the fact that today, with an everyday computer usage at almost each working place, question of individual’s capability of its managing and working appears. Analyses show that an average officer spends 10 minutes a day to remove working obstructions due to badly computer handling. That way, working hours of not just those who insufficiently know how to use the computer, but also the closest colleagues and the others, who are professionally in charge of repairing, are wasted. When these digits turn into the money, it shows that more than 1000 employees in companies irretrievably waste millions of dollars a year because of insufficient employees’ preparation for working at computers. How big are the losses on state level? Due to this, European Commission has made a plan for intensive computer training of European citizens called i2010, which predicts that in the next period 20 million citizens will take the training and get the certificate for work on computer, so they could keep their jobs. In 2003, ECDL Foundation was chosen to conduct this education by EU and now there are 8 million Europeans having the ECDL certificate.
It is already noticeable from the first Slovenian and Croatian presentations that these countries’ Governments involved in this problem of improving the IT literacy long before Serbia, as a precondition for IT society, better administration and general economic development. Almost one third of 50.000 Croatian teachers of primary and secondary schools have already passed ECDL certification and for that purpose, Croatia has set over 6 million euros aside so far! Very defeated fact for Serbia was presented when the number of citizens who have computer certifications was compared to the entire population in the state. According to these records, Serbia is almost six times late in relation to Slovenia and Croatia and even more drastic in relation to developed EU countries. If something is not done urgently on intensive and permanent spreading of IT education in the region, it is clear that the current and future investments will be directed towards low-educated labor force usage, i.e. much time will pass before we see the high technologies production in this area.
Luckily, the examples of Ireland, Malta and Portugal show that fast economic development can be achieved by intensive IT training of the citizens, so it certainly gives hope to the countries of SEE.
