Investment of European Enterprises in ICT Education of Their Employees: Relationship with Country Competitiveness and Digital Economy Development

Rapid growth and usage of different information and communication (ICT) tools influence of private and business activities. In order to sustain their position on the market, companies invest in their employees, especially in their lifelong education in the area of developing information skills. In this paper, the authors investigate the importance of ICT education in companies. The goal of the paper is to examine to what extent enterprises in European countries provide training in order to develop or upgrade the ICT skills of their employees. Data about enterprises that provide training regarding the development of ICT skills were collected from Eurostat for the year 2018. Data about Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) and its subindexes and data about the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) index have also been collected for the year 2018 in order to conduct comparative analysis. Results indicate that there is a positive trend regarding training for developing ICT skills, however, mostly in developed European countries. Although enterprises in developing countries do not substantially lag behind, their investment in this area is evidently lower.