It is through the particularly rapid change taking place in underlying technology (for example, the introduction of new versions of software, supporting hardware or interface technologies) that skill requirements change. The ability to learn and keep up with application-specific knowledge, while also developing and maintaining a growing set of core ‘generic’ skills, therefore become essential to participating in the digital world.
At the same time, the role of formal education in building a workforce equipped with ICT skills is currently the subject of debate. While formal education such as training at colleges and universities may be an effective means to reach the future workforce, the rapid nature of technological change and developments in the world of ICTs emphasize the need for lifelong learning over one-time educational instruction. Nonetheless, education can be an important means to develop at least basic ICT skills and the relatively recent introduction of ICTs in schools may mean that as time goes by more people are likely to use ICTs in school (OECD 2004).
One study found that those with more education have higher ICT skills, but suggests that more educated people tend to work with computers, making it difficult to differentiate whether education or employment has the biggest impact on ICT skill levels (DfES 2003). While beyond the scope of this study, more effort is needed in the future to measure ICT skills directly and gain insight into their development and evolution.
Differences in ICT use and familiarity by education level in 2003 were strongest in Bermuda and Italy and slightly smaller in Canada, the United States, Norway and Switzerland (Chart 14). In Canada, the gap between individuals with upper secondary (high school) education and those who did not complete high school was greater than the gap between those with high school and those with post-secondary education. While differences in intensity and diversity of Internet use, and use of computers for task-oriented purposes were clear, differences by education level were smaller for perceived usefulness and attitudes towards computers.
Chart 14. Use of computers for taskoriented purposes by educational attainment, by country, 2003
Source: Veenhof, Clermont and Sciadas, 2005.
In order to gain a better understanding of some of the factors affecting ICT use, the index measuring the use of computers for task-oriented purposes was examined in more detail. The remaining part of this section uses a logistic regression to measure the degree to which different factors influence the odds of being a high-intensity user of computers for task-oriented purposes (see Box 3).