The Digital Skills Gap....and What To Do About It

The House of Commons Science & Technology Committee produced the second report entitled Digital Skills Crisis. 

The report found that the "digital divide" is growing:

• 22% of IT equipment in schools is ineffective
• Just 35% of computer science teachers had a relevant qualification
• Only 70% of the required number of computer science teachers have been recruited
• 93% of tech companies find that a digital skills gap affects their commercial operations
• 90% of jobs require digital skills to some degree
• Skills gap costs economy around £63bn a year in lost income

The report was created 4 years ago, but many of the tenants still hold.  

A 2018 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report estimates that that over half of all employees will require significant reskilling by 2022.
The WEF states, "companies that are successful in workforce transformation will be able to harness new and emerging technologies to reach higher levels of efficiency of production and consumption, expand into new markets, and compete on new products for a global consumer base composed increasingly of digital natives.'”
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A 2020 study by service provider Salesforce identified similar gaps.  The 2020 report entitled, "​The Digital Skills Gap is Widening Fast. Here’s How to Bridge It" identifies nearly "133 million new roles generated as a result of the new division of labor between humans, machines and algorithms may emerge globally by 2022."

In January, 2021, I wrote about the Atlas VPN report that found the top critical skills in cybersecurity are: 

• Application development security is the hottest growing skill and Atlas VPN predicts demand for this experience will rise 164% in five years. 
• Cloud security experts will increase 115% over the next five years. 
• Risk management is predicted to increase 60%.
  
  

What do we do to prepare?
The workforce must prepare for continuous learning to stay current with digital skills.  Below are several examples 

• Technology leader Lockheed Martin started CodeQuest and later CyberQuest to promote programming, development, cognitive, and cybersecurity skills.  Both have been wildly successful and have gone international.   I am a plank owner in CodeQuest, helping to plan and desig the first event in Fort Worth, 2012.
  
  
• The University of Maryland Global Campus has been redesigning coursework to align with Department of Defense and industry demand for cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity.  DISA has partnered with UMGC to tackle the cybersecurity shortage head-on.
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• Individuals in the workforce have many options to up skill.  One example are the top AI courses I shared in early January.  Below are the courses
  • Artificial Intelligence A-Z: Learn How to Build an AI (Udemy)
  • ColumbiaX’s Artificial Intelligence MicroMasters Program (edX)
  • Google AI Education
  • The Beginner’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Unity (Udemy)
  • fast.ai courses – Deep Learning for Coders, Foundations, Data Ethics, Linear Algebra, Natural Language Processing
  • Machine Learning by Stanford University (Coursera)
  • Deep Learning Specialization by Andrew Ng (Coursera)
  • IBM Applied AI Professional Certificate (Coursera)
  • AI for Everyone by Andrew Ng (Coursera)
  • Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning (Coursera)
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As leaders in the workforce, it's our job to develop talent and provide opportunities to learn and grow employees.  With a digital skills crisis upon us, we can help our countries, economies, organizations, and individuals prepare for new services, products, and business models.

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