The Hungarian EUGA Leadership Board

The EUGA Consortium has successfully operated in Hungary since 2005, which served as a solid foundation for setting up the Hungarian EUGA Leadership Board ("HELB"). HELB is also the Hungarian working party for the Pan European E-skills Industry Leadership Board and the European Alliance on Skills for Employability.

HELB is a not-for-profit partnership created and operated by the Hungarian IT industry, with the main objective of supporting the highly-efficient use of IT-related development funds to create a competitive, innovative and inclusive Hungary within the European Union. The organisation functions in close co-operation with stakeholders in public administration, the academic world, trade associations and NGOs, relying on EU recommendations and similar prestigious initiatives.

HELB's Mission

HELB's mission is to serve the entire society by harmonising and representing the needs and demands of the IT industry, providing guidance for IT development objectives best serving the interests of the country, and by taking the lead in developing projects to implement such objectives.

To attain the set objectives, HELB is to

• Create synergy between resources, needs, potentials and the highest level of skills,
• Rely on ongoing dialogue in determining, formulating and representing the IT development directions deemed right by the industry,
• Represent the importance of IT development as a top priority for the national economy with the government,
• Initiate and closely monitor the development of specific and high-level IT development programmes, their channelling, approval and implementation,
• Proactively mobilise the shared resources and skills of members and advisory members for the shared objectives,
• Collect, evaluate and utilise the experiences accumulated by peer organisations and programmes already under way in the EU, while also seeking to assume the role of the pioneer, to act as a model.

The membership of HELB consists of multinational and Hungarian-owned IT companies active in Hungary. The Advisory Body of HELB unites scholars, representatives of trade associations, NGOs, training centres and relevant European networks, who will significantly contribute to the efforts of the Board through their knowledge, experience and multiplication abilities.

Knowledge and Skills in the Digital World

"A highly trained and adaptable workforce will become the foundation for European competitiveness and wealth in the 21st century, and IT skills represent the most critical building block in that process."

Günter Verheugen, Vice President of the European Commission, Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry

The European Union named knowledge and innovation as the driving forces of the European information society to be attained by 2010 under the "Partnership for Growth and Jobs" launched to implement the Lisbon Agenda.
One fourth of GDP growth and 40% to 50% of efficiency growth in the EU come from the information and communications technology sector ("ICT"). Both governments and academia unanimously agree that training aimed at improving ICT skills is an exceptional driver in employment growth and creating new jobs, and it has an essential role in the process of creating a competitive and inclusive Europe.
However, several studies and reports have pointed out in the past few years, that Europe has more and more difficulties in terms of both quantity and quality concerning the ICT skills of the workforce. Studies conducted by the EU indicate that the basic ICT skills of the European workforce are of an acceptable level; the problems result from the gaps in terms of advanced and professional skills.
That seems to be more and more menacing in the light of the fast-paced reshuffling of the global market for ICT specialists by the global competition (especially India and China). Businesses need the most talented and best trained personnel to be able to keep up with the competition.

SMEs make up the bulk of the European Economy and this sector has to face not only the need to meet global challenges but also the difficulties of decision-makers and employees in these businesses obtaining the necessary e-skills and competing in the market while relying on new business models. The workforce turned out by the formal training systems does not meet the needs of businesses in terms of quality, quantity or skill levels. The situation is made even more difficult by the fact that SMEs seem to be very sparing about ICT training of the workforce both in terms of time and cost.

This critical situation carries the threat that one of the most important pull-back forces to European growth could be the shortage of ICT skills. Consequently, the EU urges an ever-stronger, coherent and more efficient co-operation between the European workforce, governments, educational stakeholders and the ICT industry, to remove the barriers from innovation and competitiveness.

The approximately 4.5 million ICT jobs to be created between 2007 and 2011 will require a highly trained European and national workforce so that all players in the digital economy could prevail under that framework. The ICT industry, recognising the need to act, initiated a formal, Trans-European dialogue (multi-stakeholder partnership, "MSP") with other stakeholders so that the expectations of the industry will receive the attention and regulatory support from government stakeholders in line with the contribution of the industry to the budgets. The reason for the popularity of MSPs, which are becoming more and more decisive on the global level, is that they create new levels of efficiency in the co-operation between key players of the public sector, the business sector and civil society. MSPs have a shared view of strategy in combining players' resources and competences so that the main challenges in ICT development could be resolved in line with the guidelines of sustainable development, while keeping our shared interests in mind.
The evolving MSPs have a key role in European e-competence objectives as they monitor the demand for e-skills, bridge public and private training and certification processes, develop more advanced training and e-training platforms, and also constitute a critical mass by unifying resources, skills and experience under the same umbrella.

The first formal Trans-European organisation for the dialogue between the key players, the e-Skills Industry Leadership Board (EILB) was formed in June 2007, uniting the top management of leading ICT companies, IT training businesses and industry trade associations, in close co-operation with the European Commission. EILB determines integrated training, workforce replacement and certification priorities and participates in launching programmes in member states to increase the adaptability of the 21st century workforce in line with the set of criteria for the knowledge-based economy.

As a result of the smooth operation of the partnership, there are more and more e-skills programmes in different spots within Europe, financed from EU funds. Similar programmes are already under way in Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, with already hundreds of thousands trained for different levels of ICT competence. As a result of the discussions launched at the national level in the middle of last year, the spring of 2008 will see relevant programmes launched in Poland (the training of 3,000 IT Pro and 25,000 Advanced users), in the Czech Republic (e-skills training to 50,000 employees), in Spain, France and the Netherlands.

While the ICT market in Western Europe expects an annual growth of only 6.1%, the same forecast predicted Central and Eastern Europe to grow by 13.2%. However, beside the issues valid for the whole of Europe, the following factors are counterproductive to growth in this region, especially in Hungary:

1. The shortage of workforce in the market both in terms of quantity and quality (not enough specialists, insufficient skill levels, the gap between the training programmes and the demands of the market and practical use),
2. The low training priorities in the SME sector (cost- and time-sensitiveness, only 0.5% of the revenues, 3.1% of the total HR cost is spent on training),
3. Until now, in lack of formal dialogue, the lack of joint thinking and focus (on the level of the national economy) on putting e-training into the spotlight, and the inefficient use of available EU funding,
4. The insufficient attention to the employment side of the e-inclusion effort aimed at removing the digital divide, and the lack of coordination between the relevant projects.

The recognition of these problems and the intention to find rapid and efficient solutions paved the way to establishing HELB as the organisation to focus the impetus and skills in a responsible manner to represent and implement the following priorities:

• Motivate the present and future workforce to obtain e-skills and to provide them with such skills,
• Raise awareness of willingness by ICT professionals to learn and improve their competence,
• Extend the multi-stakeholder partnerships aimed at e-skills, increase their efficiency to foster employment and productivity,
• Provide support and forecasts about e-skills demands for the near future in this rapidly changing technological and economic environment.