Request for Applications: Digital Skills and Jobs Platform

Deadline: 29-May-24

The European Commission (EC) is inviting applications for the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform that contributes to the Digital Europe Policy Programme and aims to support the closing of the digital skills gap and the reaching of the Digital Decade targets.

Objectives

The objective of this call is to ensure the establishment of new National Coalitions and national websites in Member States that do not have one yet as well as the continued operation and expansion of activities of already established National Coalitions and national websites. This action will be implemented through a coordination and support action, which will fund a consortium whose responsibility it is to ensure that the activities listed in this call are carried out.
The exchange of relevant content and data on digital skills and jobs at EU and national level between the national websites and the Core Platform will help students and job seekers find training/traineeship opportunities, support enterprises in addressing their skills needs, train employees, facilitate scale-up of innovative training solutions, strengthen cooperation between the National Coalitions and enable learning across sectors and borders, as well as recommending a learning path to end users.
This action will contribute to reaching the targets set in the Digital Decade Policy Programme of increasing to 80% the number of European adults possessing at least a basic level of digital skills and reaching 20 million ICT professionals in Europe, while promoting access to women in this field in order to bridge the gender gap in the technology sector, by 2030, and contributing to the digitisation of key economic sectors.

Scope

This action aims to further extend the activities of National Coalitions’ websites established under CEF-TC calls in 2019 and 2020 as well as support the creation of new websites in Member States who do not have one yet within the network created by the CEF calls5. In Member States that do not have a national website yet, a Nation Coalition should be set up. The national websites must be set up by the National Coalition of the Member States. The approach for how to support the establishment of the National Coalitions in Member States that do not have one yet and wishing to join is left up to the consortium. In Member States that already have a National Coalition and a national website, the consortium should ensure that either the already established National Coalition or another entity that wishes to become established as the new National Coalition (for example in the case where the existing National Coalition would like to cease being the National Coalition for that Member State) perform the activities listed in this call. They should make sure that any existing national website/database is reused for this purpose. In Member States that already have a National Coalition but no national website, the consortium must ensure that the National Coalition performs the activities listed in this call to establish and operate the national website towards the connection with the Digital Skills and Jobs Platform.
The consortium must provide a detailed description in their application of how they will ensure that activities below will be achieved by National Coalitions through their assistance. Proposals are highly encouraged to cover the following points explicitly under the RELEVANCE award criteria.
Activities will include:
- Develop and connect the infrastructures (websites) of National Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs that are not yet connected to the Core Platform through interoperable interconnections, integrating and enabling exchanges with the Core Platform components.
- Provide access to national/regional/local actors and practices, building interoperable links to provide services relevant to the local context.
- Expand and engage National Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs that are already connected to the Core Platform.
Financial support to third parties (FSTP) is allowed in the call DIGITAL-2024- ADVANCED-DIGITAL-06 for grants under certain conditions. When drawing up their plan for the use of FSTP, the consortium could identify the National Coalitions already established/funded under CEF-TC 2019-20206 that are not part of the consortium and that might be funded under FSTP. The consortium could also look into attracting new National Coalitions in Members States that do not have one yet. It is expected that the FSTP will be adjusted proportionally to the activities to be achieved described below. While no ceiling is set for the total FSTP ratio in the budget, it is expected that the consortium ensures a reasonable distribution between the project budget to be used by the consortium and FSTP.

Funding Information

The available call budget is EUR 2 000 000.

Outcomes and Deliverables

The outcomes may vary as some Member States already have National Coalitions and national websites established while other do not yet. As a minimum, the consortium must ensure that all National Coalitions funded under this action carry out the following activities and Proposals are highly encouraged to cover those points (including General Provisions) explicitly under the IMPLEMENTATION award criteria:
- Activity 1: Web development
  - Development of one national website/database per participating Member State that do not have an established national website. The national website, serving as a “web antenna” (or link) to the Core Platform, must provide content and data on digital skills and jobs in a coherent and structured way in the official language(s) of the concerned country. Content must include interoperable links to the Core Platform as well as other national web antennas in line with the Technical Specifications.
  - Upgrading and maintenance of the national websites in Member State where these have already been established.
  - Technical maintenance, support and security updates must be provided for the national website.
- Activity 2: Services, Content and Community related activities
  - Expected outputs to be delivered in official language(s) and published on the national websites of all National Coalitions:
    - Presentation of the National Coalition and its members for new National Coalitions: an interoperable part based on the technical specifications provided under activity 1, covering digital skills for the labour force, ICT professionals and other digital experts, education, citizens.
    - Presentation of relevant parts of the Core Platform content EU initiatives in digital skills and jobs, EU funding opportunities, news, events, etc. National Coalitions should also present additional relevant content from the Core Platform according to their territorial needs and specificities.
    - Create and implement an interoperable repository of good practices, using the API model (from Activity 1) and connected to the Core Service Platform repository based on the technical specifications (from Activity 1) and a common, uniform approach. The proposed action must select and promote good practices that address gaps and local specificities.
    - Create and implement an interoperable repository of resources on digital skills, with a specific section making available national and regional strategies and measures, training curricula, non-proprietary MOOCs, details on methodologies, case studies and other training material.
    - Present relevant and innovative training opportunities on advanced digital skills currently available targeted at end users. Presented training opportunities should cover diverse settings (on-line, classroom, boot camps, work-based) and diverse formats (part-time, full-time, short term), offered by a wide range of providers (industry, formal education and training, open learning) to ensure flexibility and relevance to users. The website should allow stakeholders to submit for publication upcoming training opportunities on digital skills via an online interface and the National Coalition should implement a review procedure prior to publication. If such platforms/databases presenting relevant training offers on digital skills already exist at national and or regional level, the National Coalition should ensure visibility and links to those databases to facilitate search of relevant training opportunities by end users and increase overall transparency.
- Activity 3: Post-editing and localisation of content
  - All National Coalitions must provide translation of content and post-edit services from English to the official language(s) and vice versa, rendering content relevant for the local context.
  - The national websites must reuse the information on the Core Platform by publishing it in their official language(s) (e.g. EU policy information, skills intelligence, selected good practices, events, news, funding opportunities, content relevant for national stakeholders and activities). Conversely, the National Coalitions will review English translations of their content for the Core Platform, which will disseminate information from the national websites (e.g. good practices, funding/training opportunities, events, news).
  - The National Coalitions will access services from the European Commission’s Machine Translation system eTranslation. They will need to review the texts translated into their official language(s) from the machine translation system and post-edit them before publishing. Similarly, the National Coalitions will also review the automatic translation into English of content from the national websites before publishing on the Core Platform.

KPIs to measure Outcomes and Deliverables

Proposals are highly encouraged to cover below points explicitly under the IMPACT award criteria.
The consortium should address how it will ensure the continuity (financial and technical) of all the National websites beyond EU-funded projects.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure outcomes and deliverables should be provided by the consortium. They should reflect the proposal’s main outcomes and deliverables.
As a minimum, the consortium must ensure that all National Coalitions meet the following KPIs:
- Presentation of the National Coalition and its members/activities in 4 categories
- Overview of relevant national and regional strategies with description
- Overview of EU initiatives and programmes in digital skills and jobs, relevant news and events
- Presentation of 20 good practices from the national/regional/local level, with in depth presentation of 3 good practices
- Presentation of 8 good practices from the Core Platform published on the national website
- Presentation of 10 resources on digital skills
- Presentation of 50 training opportunities targeting different groups of end users

Targeted Stakeholders

This call for proposals will fund one consortium whose responsibility it will be to ensure that the activities and KPIs listed above are achieved. The participating consortium members should therefore demonstrate their ability to ensure this.
The consortium will be responsible for organising the way it will achieve the work required for this action as well as determining how the budget will be implemented, including FSTP. Therefore, established National Coalitions are highly encouraged to apply as members of the consortium.
As a single consortium will be responsible for ensuring that the activities listed above are completed by all the National Coalitions (established and new), it is imperative that the consortium coordinator has experience in managing projects of this scale and scope, which should be demonstrated in the list of previous projects to be submitted in the mandatory annexes and supporting documents.
The following applicants are encouraged to apply as consortium members:
- Established Digital Skills and Jobs National Coalitions funded under the CEF calls CEF-TC calls in 2019 and 2020
- Private, public organisations or civil society organisations who are in a position to manage projects of this scale and scope
- Private or public organisations who have the technical knowledge (including IT) required to achieve the activities listed

Eligibility Criteria

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
  - EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
  - non-EU countries:
    - EEA countries and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme (associated countries)
Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal — and will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation). For the validation, they will be requested to upload documents showing legal status and origin.
Other entities may participate in other consortium roles, such as associated partners, subcontractors, third parties giving in-kind contributions, etc.