Digital skills assessment tool : Pix

By project DSBPGovernance

Published on 01 April 2025

Belgium

Région de Bruxelles-Capitale/ Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest

About this good practice

The development of digital skills is essential to improve the action of public administrations. All civil servants need a minimum level of digital skills, at least to access the content and services provided by the organization. Skills and level of proficiency then vary according to the position held. Measuring and developing digital skills is therefore a long-term investment for the organization.

The MW-BF has decided to invest in an online platform based on DigComp (Pix) to assess, develop and certify digital skills of its civil servants. The tool covers 16 skills in 5 areas, with 200 topics and more than 2000 questions up to level 7 out of 8.

To enable organizations to monitor the development of their employees' skills, it is possible to create customized evaluation paths by choosing specific topics and level to be reached and address them to defined target groups. The progress of the evaluation campaign is displayed in a dashboard, as well as the overall and individual results per skill tested.

The ministry has created specific paths for the various digital profiles developed by function family, which are used for recruitment and will soon be used for evaluations. We created as well as thematic paths based on 3 skill levels (beginner, intermediate and expert), that are used in training and prior to the deployment of digital tools such as Teams, Electronic Data Management, Microsoft 365, etc., to target people experiencing the digital divide.

Resources needed

Online platform access costs an amount per year per civil servant that uses the tool, according to number of people using the platform.
Two full-time employees are needed to manage the tool: creating specific paths required for recruitment and training, managing campaigns, improving content

Evidence of success

1850 on 7300 civil servants have done a generic digital skills assessment test. Involvement would have been increased with a team challenge in a short period of time.

2739 Pix accounts created amongst civil servants, 5609 tests initiated, 148 campaigns created. By shortening duration of tests (20 minutes maximum), we have increased participation.

8 specific Pix tests created for recruitement in a test phase. Successful completion leads to implementation of the procedure for all recruitment.

Potential for learning or transfer

The practice is based on a very specialized online digital skill assessment platform that can give us all statistics we need regarding digital skills amongst civil servants. The one we use, Pix, is actually available in French, English and Dutch. Replicating it means translating it: it costs +/- 100.000 euros and takes 1 year.

But the idea to create DigComp based digital skills tests specific to job or tasks can be easily replicated.