Public Policy Group

Mission

The ELIG Public Policy Group interacts with European policy makers and institutions in order to organize ELIG participation to political debates, consultations and initiatives around the role and impact of next generation learning and education.

In the spirit of advancing public-private-partnership in this domain - the ELIG Public Policy Group also facilitates active engagement of the ELIG member organizations in making European policy initiatives on next generation learning and education a success.

Current domains of ELIG Public Policy activities:

1. Supporting a new political Agenda for the European Knowledge Society - beyond the Lisbon Goals

Strengthening education is at the heart of the EU2020 strategy strategy and a primary means to fight inequality, unemployment and poverty as well as to increase European innovativeness and economic capacity. ELIG highlights the need for a modernized, empowering, open and efficient European educational environment in this context - including institutional education as well as life long support of acquiring and improving personal competences, knowledge and skills.

Related ELIG documents:

• ELIG Manifesto: "Next Practices in Learning and Education - Making Europe the leading Learning Society" ELIG contribution to the EU2020 Strategy Consultation

2. Supporting the European Digital Agenda

The European Digital Agenda will define the cornerstones of European policies in the domain of the Information Society - in support of the wider goals set-up in the EU2020 strategy.

The ELIG public policy group is working on contributions and trigerring specific debates in the areas of:

1. New learning content models.
   New digital learning content provisioning possibilities as well as new open models of learner interaction and content re-use, re-mix and co-creation are calling to rethink existing business and licensing models of the publishing industry.
   ELIG is advancing a differentiated position in which aspects of content quality ensurance and protection of intellectual ownership are integrated with new open possibilities of using, accessing and creating learning assets.
2. Digital Literacy
   ELIG supports the development of a European Initiative on Digital Literacy to create new competences for all European citizens in communication, privacy protection, quality information retrieval, work- and social- interaction possibilities of the Internet.
   Digital Literacy and Supporting Key Skills, Online Educa Berlin 2009 
   BEUC Forum on Consumer Privacy and Online Marketing 
3. Digital Learning and Education Infrastructure
   New mobile and fixed devices, increasing network multi-media capabilities as well as new Internet delivery platforms are changing the possibilities of learning online ELIG is working to raise the awareness on the potentials of technologies such as Cloud Computing in learning and educational applications.

3. Developing key skills in Europe to support the information and communication core industries and applied sectors

The pace of the Information Age development is still not slowing down. Constantly evolving new skills are needed to take full advantage of the possibilities.

ELIG supports the European eSkills Initiative as a European wide approach to address the professional competences that enable employment and innovation in the Information and Communication Industries as well as in Industries applying these technologies:

European eSkills Initiative

European eSkills 2009 Conference 

European eCompetence Framework

4. Fostering innovation in educational and learning practices

The evolution of new technologies for communication, social interaction or media provisioning go along with a constant creation of new possibilities to innovate educational and learning practices. ELIG is fostering a deeper European dialogue between the practicioners side (e.g. leaders of learning institutions, corporate Chief Knowledge or Learning Officers), the technological and content providers side and policy makers.

Learnnovation Open Forum

Thinking Across Disciplines - Shaping Future Wellfare Together

ELIG also supports innovative European pilot and research projects via direct engagement of the ELIG organization, involvement of ELIG members or involvement in advisory or review roles:

ELIG supported research and innovative pilot projects:

1. Open Educational Resources:
   OpenSE *
   OpenED  *
2. Competence Building in serious Games
   TARGET
3. Collaborative online learning and Knowledge Maturation
   MATURE

*The OpenSE and OpenED projects are funded by the European Commission under the LifeLongLearning Programme, the TARGET and MATURE projects are funded under the FP7 "Technology enhanced learning" objective.

ELIG contributions in 2009/2010 to European Commission Expert Hearings on innovation topics (further information on request):

• The Future Internet and its impact on eSkills
• European Exchange Mechanisms for eSkills
• Smarter Cities for Europe
• Technology enhanced Learning - FP7 Workprogramme 2011-2012 Consultation

ELIG supports the European Transparency Initiative on political lobbying in the EU and is registered in the European Commission's register of interest representatives ID Number: 94289123064-01) - see the supported code of conduct