Statement
Europe needs a a sovereign and interoperable digital education infrastructure
CSC agrees with the three interconnected structural challenges that have been identified as the main problems to be addressed by the European Commission’s upcoming Education Package, in particular the lack of sovereign digital education infrastructure.
When developing a European infrastructure, the following points should be taken into account:
- While the scope of the Education Package is school education, the digital infrastructure should serve all levels of education, especially where there are shared challenges, such as collection and production of data.
- The digital education infrastructure does not require creating new centralised solutions but rather federating and scaling existing ones.
- Interoperability is a key issue that must be approached broadly, taking into account all levels of interoperability and making use of existing collaboration structures, such as the Higher Education Interoperability Framework.
- To allow the education sector to grasp the numerous opportunities of AI, safe, resilient and trustworthy AI solutions must be developed as a part of the European digital education infrastructure.
- Developing a sovereign European digital education infrastructure is not a one-off project but requires long-term goal-oriented funding mechanisms and collaboration structures, not only for the infrastructures as such but also for the data and skills needed to fuel them.
- The digital infrastructure for education must be closely tied to the overall technological sovereignty framework, making efforts towards a technology ecosystem where, for example, the AI Factories are used also for developing European AI solutions and capabilities for educational purposes.
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Contact
Irina Kupiainen
Director, EU Affairs, Policy and Business Development
Irina Kupiainen is responsible for CSC’s public affairs.