The general goal of this service contract was to monitor key indicators and scenarios on the supply and the demand of e-skills and to benchmark national policy initiatives and multi-stakeholder partnerships in the European Union. To this end, the study analysed the evolution of the supply and demand in the last ten years to provide a robust basis for understanding the impact of the initiatives launched at EU and national level since 2008, to propose new approaches (wherever appropriate) to remedy the situation and to identify better ways and more efficient means to foster multi-stakeholder partnerships to reduce e-skills shortages, gaps and mismatches.

Heavy involvement of national correspondents from the ENIR network took place to properly accomplish the challenging work in all EU28 member states.

The study has to be seen against the Commission”s Communication on “e-Skills for the 21st Century” (2007) which presented a long term e-skills agenda, “The Digital Agenda” (2010) and the Communication “Towards a Job-rich Recovery” (2012) which include new proposals regarding e-skills.