The 24th of January 2024 marked the opening of an exciting investment in the future of data spaces not only for Headai but for the whole European Data Space with an opening event in Paris.
Prometheus-X is an international consortium of European education and training institutions as well as businesses in EdTech, JobTech, DataTech and AI, intending to improve collaboration between key players to close the skills gap and prepare Europe for the job market of today and tomorrow and ensure its competitiveness in the global job market.
In the first decades of the 21st century, we have already seen the speeding up of the job market with technological and societal changes reflected in the disappearance of “old” jobs and the apparition of new ones. The constant change in the labour market is here to stay and requires constant adaptation and increasingly bigger flexibility from both individuals and organisations to stay competitive. Additionally, only a striking 53% of Europeans currently possess basic digital skills, which adds to the challenges of the labour market in the digital age overall, while there are also noticeable skills gaps in key fields of tomorrow such as cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity as companies struggle to fill positions.
Many institutions such as universities or employers already possess a large amount of highly relevant data for optimising the match between job seekers and jobs in the labour market and supporting targeted training of employees for the roles needing to be filled. Still, at the moment a lot of this data is unstructured, and in many cases not put into use at all. If harnessed in the right way, this data can help match people to the right role or acquire the right skills necessary for future jobs. However, to do so, it has first to be organised and made available to those who can benefit from it.
The potential of data-sharing networks and ecosystems as a solution to integrate data across players and borders in a safety-compliant and efficient manner has been shown on various occasions by distinguished institutions in building the future of Europe such as Sitra, while they have also highlighted the current lack of funding for such pan-European initiatives. In addition to the challenge of funding, the siloing of existing data and the current lack of a governance model to create trust in data sharing have posed issues for the development of data spaces across Europe.
This is where the concept of European Data Space for Skills comes into play: by creating a framework for sharing skills data across key players in Europe through the creation of skills data spaces, we can make data interoperable ethically and safely and products and tools supporting employability more reliable, as well as accessible to the right people for shaping jobs and education on both individual and shared levels.
The question at hand is: how can we build such innovative data space spaces and work with data and data services to contribute to improvements and progress in the labour market across Europe?
Prometheus-X was born as a response to this challenge to bring into the same room the key players needed to build such an infrastructure. Based on the ground laid by the DS4Skills project in 2023 in the form of a European Blueprint for the creation of Data Spaces, Prometheux-X takes on the executive phase of creating concrete solutions for harmonising data exchange for individual skill evaluation, education, training and reskilling of the population for the jobs of tomorrow through an international initiative for the future of the European Data Spaces in Education, Reskilling, and Upskilling.
The demand for these solutions is clear and the response to the project has been overwhelmingly positive: in 2023, more than 20M euros were secured for Prometheus-X. Following this, the kickoff event in January in Paris gathered all 38 participating organisations including SMEs in the tech and EdTech sectors, ICT corporates, employment agencies, research organisations, VET providers, and academia in the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, itself a participant organisation, to discuss the main objectives of the initiative and create a roadmap to achieving them.
Headai has the honour of being a founding member of Prometheus-X. With the previous learnings and achievements in the prior DS4Skills project in 2023, we are eager to continue the work on creating the European Data Space for Skills with our colleagues across Europe. Headai’s role in the initiative will consist of sharing use cases in the domain of skills, providing technological infrastructures for data sharing and integration, as well as developing open-source building blocks for solutions.
“The Data Space for Growth and Education consists of members that are interested in building a sustainable business around data spaces, and that is why I trust we are going to make remarkable changes on what the data in education is going to be in a few years.” Says Headai’s CEO Harri Ketamo. “The team members are committed to doing sustainable business in the upcoming data spaces, and I believe we are going to make groundbreaking innovations for people, companies, and education providers in Europe by providing several building blocks and a lot of catalogue products meant together to improve skills, talent development, education and eventually sustainable economic growth in Europe.”
Want to hear more or join as a pilot project to Prometheus-X and gain the benefits of skills data space? Contact us! anu.passi-rauste@headai.com
To stay up to date on Prometheus-X, make sure to follow Headai and other Prometheus-X partners on LinkedIn for recent updates. A dedicated website will be launched soon for in-depth updates on the initiative and its progress, but in the meantime, you can always reach us at info@headai.com
