Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills
of their adult populations for the purposes of monitoring how well prepared they are for the challenges of
the new information world. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework
developed for the assessment of problem solving in technology-rich environments for the OECD’s
Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This covers the specific
class of problems that people encounter when using information and communication technologies. These
include problems where the existence of the problem is a consequence of the availability of new
technologies, where the solution requires the use of computer-based applications or where the problem
relates to the management or use of information technologies.
