International Certification of Digital Literacy

The ICDL / ECDL certification is a globally recognised information and communication technology (ICT) and digital literacy qualification.

[3] In 1995 the ECDL certification programme was developed through a task force of the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) and was recommended by the European Commission High Level Group, ESDIS, to be a Europe-wide certification scheme.

[4] The task force compared several national certification schemes and chose the CDL from Finland as the basis for piloting and later adoption into the ECDL.

[3] The ICDL certificates are seen as valuable in business/government administration – as they save the time to evaluate an applicant's computer skills.

In professions like publishing, graphic and web design, science or information technology, a completed ICDL course is not a desired quality however as the work requires specialist skills and experience with other software.