Scholars and science and technology writers alike have regularly commented on the speed at which the digital revolution is affecting the global economy as well as the economic and political opportunities of governments and individuals. This alarming speed of growth poses the problem of the sufficiency of ‘digital skills’ in the workplace (Berger and Frey, 2016).

Higher education (HE) institutions have not been slow to recognize the pressing questions and problems posed by the digital revolution. However, despite the attention given to the digital revolution, there is a shortage of attention given to the question of what digital skills will be needed to fill public sector skills gaps in the near future.

Existing studies report evidence of low levels of digital skill training for public sector professions (Cham et al., 2022), and there appears to be too little consideration given to how the digital skills gap can be addressed in new curricula (Mei, Feng, and Cavallaro, 2023). According to Ogonek and Hofmann (2018), "there has been no thorough analysis of which skills governments actually require and how these skills are addressed by (vocational) training". The practical consequences of this also suggest that we may need to reconsider and update our digital competence frameworks for assessing digital skills of university students (Lucas et al., 2022).

This problem analysis raises the importance of a two interlinked questions: (1) what are important digital skills in the public sector? and (2) how well do different organizational and individual factors explain differences in skills levels?

References

Berger, T., & Frey, C. B. (2016). Digitalization, Jobs, and Convergence in Europe: Strategies for Closing the Skill Gap: Oxford Martin School; University of Oxford.

Cham, K., Edwards, M. L., Kruesi, L., Celeste, T., & Hennessey, T. (2022). Digital preferences and perceptions of students in health professional courses at a leading Australian university: A baseline for improving digital skills and competencies in health graduates. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 38(1), 69-86.

Lucas, M., Bem‐haja, P., Santos, S., Figueiredo, H., Ferreira Dias, M., & Amorim, M. (2022). Digital proficiency: Sorting real gaps from myths among higher education students. British journal of educational technology, 53(6), 1885-1914.

Mei, L., Feng, X., & Cavallaro, F. (2023). Evaluate and identify the competencies of the future workforce for digital technologies implementation in higher education. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 8(4), 100445.

Ogonek, N., & Hofmann, S. (2018). Governments' Need for Digitization Skills: Understanding and Shaping Vocational Training in the Public Sector. International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age (IJPADA), 5(4), 61-75.

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