With over 30 years of experience as a service and support center for businesses, Cesae was “reborn” in 2020 as Cesae Digital, a space dedicated exclusively to digital skills development, integrating the network of management centers in which the Institute participates in employment and vocational training (IEFP). More than 500 courses were held in 2021 alone, with more than 8,000 interns. More than half are women and employability is almost 80%. In 2023, the pilot project “Espaço Cidadania Digital” will be launched, which aims to be the first contact of citizens with digital skills.
“It is not worth focusing on the digital transformation of public administration and companies if a large percentage of the Portuguese population is not in touch with technologies and also unable to use digital platforms. online income tax, make an appointment or do you check vaccines on the SNS24 portal?” asks Cesae Digital’s president, Luís Manuel Ribeiro. To meet this need, to give every Portuguese at least a basic level of digital proficiency, the so-called “Digital Citizenship Space” will be born, which will be tested in the first phase in the municipalities of the Intermunicipal Community of Tâmega and Sousa, one of the regions with the lowest qualifications in the country. The aim is to test different operating models, namely with monitoring, but also on a self-study basis, and with different hours, including weekends, to meet the different needs of the population.
But the center also wants to develop training plans – the center’s offer is varied, from initial training for young people to training and education courses for adults, not to mention the so-called on-the-job training, that is, in an environment – according to the needs of the market and companies, which it knows well, both through the network of entities with which it works, and through the cooperation agreement it has with the Associação Empresarial de Portugal (AEP).
Gender diversity: Computing and information technology have traditionally been the areas most sought after by male students, but 57% of Cesae Digital interns are already women. The average age is 30 years
For the president of Cesae Digital, professional requalification is “the fastest answer” to the recruitment needs of companies and for this reason, five years ago the center founded #DigitalReskilling, the professional requalification and integration program in digital fields. , which has already trained 800 people in areas as diverse as mobile application development, programming, cybersecurity or network management.
Convinced that universities are failing to market young graduates in sufficient numbers for the needs of companies, Luís Manuel Ribeiro advocates the urgency of requalifying existing assets, whether through adult education and training, modular training, initiatives such as # DigitalReskilling or training actions within the companies themselves, so that a technological evolution in the production system does not entail the need to hire new workers. “It is the way to ensure that an employee who is already part of the company culture can acquire the necessary digital skills and thus keep their job,” he says.
Focus on companies: The network of partnerships established with companies and the Associação Empresarial de Portugal allows to design the training plan that is tailored to the recruitment needs of the market.
professional requalification
The #DigitalReskilling courses, eight to ten a year, are aimed at unemployed people who want to refocus their professional activity. That is, for people who cannot find a career opportunity within their original education. More than half of the trainees have completed higher education, in fields completely different from information technology.
Filomena Teles is one such example. With a degree in biology and a master’s degree in forensic science, when she tried to enter the job market, she realized that technological and computer communications were “quite desirable” for her field of work. He then embarked on a technology specialization course in computer networks, where he first encountered programming. This was followed, in the context of #DigitalReskilling, by the Web and Mobile Development course, which he says is “a great starting point for entering the coveted world of work”.
PPR: Cesae Digital has a EUR 4 million project approved by the PRR for the installation, in Santo Tirso, of the country’s first decentralized professional training center in digital skills. It will have 18 training rooms and five laboratories, with a capacity of 400 trainees
And Luís Manuel Ribeiro guarantees that the center and its trainees are not only sought after by the big technology companies, but by companies of all sizes and sizes. Mainly because, with the advancement of digitalization and Industry 4.0, “every company, in every sector, today has an IT department and needs qualified and trained personnel in this area”. The goal, he says, is that “no one is left behind in this digital transformation”.
Source: DN
