Austria Investing in Digital Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted academics throughout the world and triggered the Austrian government to invest in digital education solutions for all levels of education. Austria’s Ministry of Education, Science and Research prioritized building digital education capacity in their 2021-22 budget opening immediate opportunities for U.S. providers of digital learning tools and cloud solutions.

K12 Digital Education Expansion: The Ministry of Education budgeted $236 million for digital learning solutions in primary and secondary schools through 2022 focused on hardware, software, training and curriculum standardization as outlined in their 8-Points Plan. During the Spring 2020 COVID-19 crisis, the Austrian government instituted extensive restrictions including school closures. Distance learning was quickly adopted. Then in May 2020, students returned to school on a part-time basis before the summer break. The Fall 2020 school year opened with in-person instruction at the lower levels with extensive health-oriented measures. As remote learning has become a vital educational tool during the pandemic, Austrian government recognized the importance of providing the needed education technology to the students and the faculty.

Higher Education Digital and Social Transformation: The Ministry of Education is investing $50 million through 2024 to support university-initiated proposals designed to increase innovation, capability and efficacy in higher education. The Ministry approved 35 proposals at 22 public universities in the areas of Digitization in Teaching and Learning, Learning Analytics, Skills for the Digital Age, Usage of Digital Transformation for the Social Dimension, Open Science and E-Administration. All approved projects are being managed by the universities, that identify the technical hardware and/or digital software needed for implementation.

Public procurements are expected to be placed on the university websites and/or on nation/EU-wide tendering sites over the next few months: https://www.auftrag.at/Default.aspx?lang=en-us https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/general/page.html?name=home

For more information, please contact CS Austria’s Robee Sallegue at robee.sallegue@trade.gov