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improve processes, hence reducing administrative burden and facilitating productivity of the
performance. Employees of public administration should be smart and knowing ICT solution
subscribers and users, who know how to convert needs into clearly defined functional demands,
who have understanding of the required service standards, applicability, security, performance
requirements, which will have to be ensured by ICT solutions and must manage to use these
solutions for the performance of their direct obligations. Also, a comprehension regarding ICT
project management methodologies and ICT solution maintenance should be improved. The
development of the mentioned competences is a precondition for the successful implementation
of high quality and user-friendly e-governance solutions. Employees of public administration
have to be fully aware of opportunities provided by ICT in order to provide support to public to
receive e-services as well as to ensure that input invested in the development of ICT and eservices infrastructure achieves its goal.
Required Actions
Public administration management and training of ICT employees should be performed regularly
as well as to facilitate unified understanding of improvement of process efficiency and
opportunities and applicability of new technologies for improvement of administration process.
In order to ensure improvement of public administration ICT competences within the framework
of the activities implemented by State Chancellery in the field of capacity strengthening and
competence development of the public administration human resources, it is necessary to include
appropriate educational programmes in educational modules for the improvement of ICT
competences as well as process analysis competences for the employees in public administration
and provide corresponding training in collaboration with the Latvian School of Public
administration and other providers of training services.
It is essential to provide the necessary ICT skills training for public administration employees,
particularly for the ICT professionals regarding effective ICT governance, architecture, security
and maintenance issues, for ICT project managers regarding e-governance project management
and ordering issues, as well as to plan training for state and local authorities’ chairpersons
regarding ICT possibilities of public administration for modern service organisation provision.
Given the rapid development of digital learning resources in the field of education and the need
for more personalised learning process, teachers’ ICT skills are crucial for provision of high
quality education process. A standardised assessment of teachers’ ICT skills is associated with
the unified quality level classification system, in which a cyclic ICT skills certification would
ensure objective monitoring of the situation and planning of professional development on
municipality and national level.
5.1.4 Preparation of ICT Practitioners and Professionals According to Requirements of
Labour Market
In recent years, in Latvia, as in Europe, lack of ICT professionals is increasing – in Europe, one
in four ICT jobs is vacant, and it is expected that by 2015 there will be shortage of approximately
700 000 ICT professionals in Europe. In order to ensure stable economic growth, it is necessary
to expand and improve skills of ICT practitioners and professionals, i.e., digital literacy, with
particular focus on training of qualified ICT specialists for the labour market, development of
vocational ICT programmes and adolescent ICT education.
information_society_development_guidelines_2014_2020.docx; Information Society Development Guidelines
2014-2020