Industry stakeholders are calling for standardisation when it comes to recognising digital capabilities for students entering the workforce.
The Future Skills Organisation (FSO) and Australian Digital Inclusion Alliance (ADIA) launched the Turbocharging Digital Capability paper to lobby for a nationwide simplified description of digital capabilities ‘necessary to access work, learning, and life meaningfully’.
Future Skills Organisation CEO Patrick Kidd says having an industry-wide standard would help deliver skill at scale for all Australians.
“Let’s be clear about the functional skills that will enable people to thrive and prosper,” he told EducationDaily. “It’s a call to action to say, ‘let’s up the skills of everybody, let’s have a common language that we can use to have consistency and an ability to measure where we’re at so we can then have the targeted strategies which we can then follow’.”
AIDA convenor Ishtar Vij is co-author of the capability paper and says only 23.6 per cent of Australians remain digitally excluded in 2023. It’s a figure that he believes highlights the importance of improving digital standards as the world becomes increasingly online.
“We know that those experiencing digital exclusion, including in relation to their digital capability level, are groups already facing barriers to education and employment: First Nations Australians, those with a disability, living in public housing, who’ve not completed schooling, senior Australians. Digital capability transcends a typical ‘tech job’,” he says. “It extends to being capable of engaging and participating in all aspects of work, learning, and life.”
Mr Kidd says creating a digital capability standard will create pathways for all Australians.
“This is about trying to set an aspirational bar that we can all aim towards – so you can improve as you go forward,” he told EducationDaily. “It provides a north star to aim towards, and the north star could be applied to different parts of the community – be you rural or be you a migrant newcomer from overseas.”
He recognises that creating an industry standard for digital capabilities will be challenging.
“I think it’s quite hard, Mr Kidd says. “Lots and lots of nations worldwide are struggling with the same thing, the technology changes quite quickly. Because it is a relatively immature industry, it doesn’t have the structure you would have with the more traditional skills.”
The Albanese Government produced a new National Skills Agreement with the State Governments on 17 October, producing a number of reforms including a $2.4 billion boost to support state and territory skills sectors, including digital technology.
“I now think it has been recognised, I think the challenge now is, how do we get after it and do it at pace because that’s what it demands.”
