How do we achieve the dream of lifelong learning? Time to find concrete solutions

Skills supply Education and training

Digitalization and globalization are now putting both education and training systems and labour market matching systems under formidable pressure to change. Lifelong learning is on the lips of many, but what does it take to truly achieve continuous skills development as the labor market changes? That's what IT&Telecom companies intend to find out, by identifying concrete scenarios that outline the path to what we believe is the dream state.

We dream about:

  • An education and training system in which, in addition to an adequate initial education, everyone is given the opportunity for continuous, work-integrated further training and/or retraining adapted to their own needs, in balance with the needs of employers and society.
  • Educational institutions, both public and private, that are designed to meet the needs of these three stakeholders, rather than the other way around.
  • A labor market matching system with clear incentives for both individuals and matching providers to give both parties what they are looking for.
  • A partnership model where all employers and employees see a clear benefit in being involved in developing joint solutions for the supply of skills.
  • A labor migration focus on promoting talent attraction through coordinated government management based on a one-stop-shop model.

Achieving this will require us to redesign a multitude of systems, models and regulations, which is of course a huge challenge. But we have to start at some point, and to do that we first need to have a clear and long-term vision - a dream state - to start from.

We believe that a good place to start is to sketch out concrete scenarios of what the optimal training or skills development situations look like, thereby making visible what changes are necessary to achieve them. In this way, we can clearly state how training needs to be regulated and funded, and task a government-appointed training commission with implementation.

We start by working out three scenarios; one focusing on the educational situation, one focusing on the individual's driving forces and one on the collaboration between companies and educators. We do this during a workshop in the IT & Telecom Companies' IT Competence Council, during which Professor Gunnar Karlsson and Chief of Staff Mattias Wiggberg from KTH and Ana Andric, investigator at Saco, also participate.

We will use the following sources as a basis for our work. Do you have any additional sources to contribute? Please get back to me!