Tackling the Digital Skills gap - events and initiatives
The Digital Skills Gap is a major challenge in the UK, both in terms of individual skills for life and in terms of skills to be effective and productive in a work setting. We attended two events in November that highlighted initiatives designed to help address these challenges.
The first was hosted by Future Dot Now, a coalition of industry leaders working to ensure that all working age adults have the digital skills they need to benefit their own prosperity and UK productivity. The organisation is working to unite business to tackle the gap in the digital capability and confidence of the UK workforce.
The event included an address by Saqib Bhatti, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy in the UK Government, who stressed the importance of improving the digital skills in the UK workforce to improve the competitiveness of the UK economy on the world stage.
It also highlighted the work of the Digital Skills Council, which aims to provide a focal point for the liaison between government and industry to address the digital skills shortage and quality deficit in the UK.
The session highlighted work that had originally been done within UK Government to develop the Essential Digital Skills framework, which defines the digital skills adults need to safely benefit from, participate in and contribute to the digital world. Research carried out by Future Dot Now suggests that 23.4m working age adults cannot complete all the digital tasks essential for today’s workplace and 3.2m working age adults cannot complete any of the essential digital work tasks.
We believe that by providing a clear baseline that digital skills programmes can target, the Essential Digital Skills framework has a very important role to play in levelling up digital skills in the UK workforce.
The Digital Skills Roadmap, a joint publication by Future Dot Now and the Digital Skills Council is a major new vision for national action on digital skills in the UK workforce, detailing the best next steps for government, business and civil society to ensure everyone has the Essential Digital Skills needed for work.
The second event we attended was the Digital Skills Forum, a new initiative launched by AND Digital, one of the members of the Tech for Good Alliance. The launch event brought together 100 leaders from a wide range of organisations in the digital sector to discuss issues related to the digital skills gap and to recruit them to take co-ordinated action to address the issues.
Discussions on the day covered a range of topics including two panel sessions covering the role of apprenticeships in supporting the development of digital skills and the skills that will be vital for businesses to unlock GenAI's full potential in the next three years.
The Digital Skills Forum aims to support and complement the work of the Digital Skills Council in addressing the skills shortage, by encouraging people and organisations to lean in and work with the skills they already have.
It is heartening to see the collaboration and mutual support that exists between these complementary groups and initiatives and to see them unite behind the advancement of a common framework.
We, as the Scottish Tech Army, will be working to promote and support this work both directly and through the Tech for Good Alliance. The need for digital skills in every bit as important in the third sector as in the private and public sectors and we aim to raise awareness in the sector and to signpost and support organisations as they work to ensure that their teams all reach and go beyond the baseline defined in the Essential Digital Skills framework.