White Paper Digital Skills

8/9/2019 White Paper Digital Skills

1/17

Digital Depot, The Digital Hub, Thomas Street, Dublin 8, Ireland. t: 353 1 4893602 e:[email protected]: www.digitalmediaforum.net

Why Digital Skills?

A white paper by the Digital Media Forum

March 1st 2010

In collaboration with

In the Workplace. In the Community. For every Citizen.


2/17


3/17


computer, music, photo, video, social surf and webshare. The training

enables candidates to confidently progress and develop their skills in using

the existing digital devices that will develop their ability to live online in

todays digital world. The entire suite offers 60 hours of online, interactive

guided learning to the user.

www.i-cando.ie


4/17


CONTENTS

1. Executive Summary

2. Productivity benefits of providing Digital Literacy Training in the

workforce

3. Examples of productivity in the workforce using Social Media and

learning technologies

4. Economic benefits of Digital Literacy in the Community

5. Economic Benefits of Digital Literacy Training for the Unemployed


5/17


1. Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to outline the benefits of teaching digital skillsand increasing digital literacy within the Irish workforce and society in general.

If we are to achieve the aims of creating a Smart Economy1, it is critical that

we not only avoid a further digital divide, but that we encourage those within

employment and those looking for employment to equip themselves with the

necessary digital skills for them to flourish within a services-driven Smart

Economy.

The outputs outlining the benefits of such an approach are extrapolated from

international reports and put into a verifiable Irish context. The main outputs

from this report attest to the following:

Providing digital literacy training within the workforce will give

Ireland a 2.1 billion productivity gain annually.

Digital Literacy will offer a 3-10% wage premium for those who

choose to upgrade their ICT skills in Ireland.

Digital Literacy training could provide benefits of 1.6 billion per

year in communities at risk of poverty.

By 2020, almost 75% of jobs in Ireland will be in the services area

and will require basic digital literacy skills.

Adults who are able to use ICT are 25% more confident about

finding a job than non-users.

1http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/attached_files/BuildingIrelandsSmartEconomy.pdf


6/17


Digital Literacy is increasingly becoming an essential life skill and the

inability to access or use ICT has effectively become a barrier to social

integration and personal development.

- (DG Information Society and Media Group, 2008, p. 4).


7/17


8/17


Employed Population 1,768,400Population benefiting fromICT competency

1,237,880

Average hours gained per

employee per year (47 weeks)

78

Average saved per employee 1,708

Annual potential productivity

gain for Ireland

2,114,299,040

Table 1 Potential Productivity gains based on Irish working population

An annual productivity gain of2.1 billion (21.1 billion over 10 years) is

significant and it is based on the assumption that 70% of the workforce could

achieve productivity improvement.

Providing digital literacy training within the workforce will give Ireland a

2.1 billion productivity gain annually.


9/17


3. Examples of productivity in the workforce using Social

Media and learning technologies

Oil & Gas Industry

With fewer resources overall and colleagues scattered across continents, it is

no surprise that the Microsoft and Accenture Oil & Gas Collaboration Survey

2010 4, which surveyed 275 professionals within international, national and

independent oil and gas and related companies, found that social media and

collaboration technology adoption is primarily a grassroots phenomenon

within firms. At the same time, half of those surveyed said their companies

prohibit or restrict the use of many of these publicly available tools, such as

photo-sharing and social networking sites.

Oil and gas employees stated that productivity gains (37 percent), work

flexibility (95 percent) and the ability to complete projects on time and on

budget (36 percent and 38 percent) are the primary reasons for use of social

media and collaboration tools. However, companywide endorsement has not

mirrored employee demand.

The survey shows that companies are not realizing the strategic benefits

from their collaboration tools investments such as increased work-force

performance, improved sharing of knowledge or skills across the work force,

said Craig Heiser, Accenture senior executive in the Energy industry groups

management practice. To realize the full potential of collaboration

investments, companies need to change work processes and individual roles

while training their employees on how to achieve improved business

performance through collaboration.

*********

A recent University of Melbourne study5 showed that people who use the

Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive

that those who do not.

*********

4http://www.accenture.com/Global/Services/By_Industry/Energy/R_and_I/MicrosoftAccentureOilSurv

ey2010.htm5

http://voice.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/


10/17


11/17


adoption, is the default collaboration tool for most people in business.

This is a particular problem for younger workers, who are widely using social

media technologies outside of work. The Forrester study found that sixty

percent of workers under thirty use social networking at home, but less than

one quarter of them - 13% - also use such technologies at work. The report

goes on to suggest the following:

Most applications are not widely adopted: Email, word processing, Web

browsers, and spreadsheets are still the top four applications.

There is pent up demand for smartphones with only one in 10

information workers in the US possessing a smartphone for work.

Collaboration tools are stalled out, leaving email to reign supreme.

Gen Y employees are getting squashed at work.

*********

According to the UK report, the Independent Review of ICT User Skills,10

employers are continuing to report gaps in ICT user skills amongst their

employees. The 2007 National Employer Survey in the UK11 collected data

from 79,000 employers with responses coming from businesses of all sizes

and in all sectors of the economy. Twenty-four per cent of firms surveyed said

their ICT user skills needed improving, with the need increasing with the size

of business and 72.3% of businesses said they had increased training spend,

or expanded training programmes, to address their skill gaps as they believed

this had the potential to impact on productivity.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK has produced a number of

studies linking internet access for employees with business productivity. A

study into the manufacturing sector, found that on average companies

10Independent Review of ICT User Skills, Baroness Estelle Morris, June 2009 11National Employer Skills Survey UK, 2007


12/17


experience a 2.9% increase in productivity for every 10% of employees who

are given internet access12. In line with these findings, eSkills have suggested

that through exploiting digital technology, small companies could generate an

additional 25bn of Gross Value Added (GVA)c over the coming five to seven

years13.

12IT and Telecoms Insights 2008: Competitiveness of the UK IT and Telecoms Sector,e-skills UK, 2008

13 IT and Telecoms Insights 2008: The Impact of ICT on UK Productivity, e-skillsUK/

Adroit Economics and Regeneris Consulting, 2008


13/17


4. Economic benefits of Digital Literacy in the Community

The Digital Inclusion Initiative (DII) was a whole-of-community effort,spearheaded by the non-profit organization, Infoxchange in Australia, and its

eleven corporate partners. The initiative was designed to eradicate the digital

divide by providing access to computer hardware, software, affordable

internet and user support for residents of public housing. Atherton Gardens

Estate in Fitzroy, a disadvantaged community in Victoria, with a population of

3,000 residents, offered the following case study for the successful outcome

of employing digital literacy programmes in the community. Using a robust

economic model, management consulting firm A.T. Kearney has been able to

identify and measure these benefits. The results are compelling.

Benefits

In the five years since its launch in 2002, DII has generated $5.9M (3.75M)

of benefits to residents and the broader community in Atherton Gardens, in

the following areas:

1. Education and employment ($4.1 million)

Improved education

Addition of valuable language and IT skills

Access to online resources to search for jobs

2. Communication and connectivity ($1.3 million)

Discounted internet access

Cheaper alternatives to traditional telephone communications

Connectivity with the community

3. Transactional efficiencies ($0.2 million)

Utilisation of online delivery of government and financial services

Resident empowerment from increased access


14/17


4. Health and wellbeing ($0.3 million)

Access to online resources and support networks

Greater engagement with the wider community

Analysis revealed a weighted average increase in wages by $111 per month.

International evidence confirms a 3-10% wage premium for those who

upgrade ICT skills.

In Ireland, according to the CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions

(2008), 14.4% of the Irish population were at risk of poverty. This equates to

642, 174 people. If they acquired digital literacy skills, going by the Austrailian

model, that would mean the following savings:

3000 = 751,000 per year

1= 250.33 per year

642, 174 x 250.33 = 160,757,343 per year

Digital Literacy training could provide benefits of 1.6 billion per year in

communities at risk of poverty in Ireland.


15/17


6. Economic Benefits of Digital Literacy Training for the

Unemployed

Making the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based

economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and

better jobs and greater social cohesion".

- Lisbon Agenda (March 2000)

Over four million job losses are forecast for skilled manual workers (inEurope). Many of these are likely to be routine jobs replaced by new

technologies.(the) move (is) away from primary and basic manufacturing

jobs towards services. - European Centre for the Development

of Vocational Training

According to the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training

(CEDOP), the nature of industrial and technological change is increasing the

demand for the highly- and medium-qualified groups in Europe, but at the

expense of the low-qualified.

Demand for qualifications, net change (EU-27+)


16/17


The group forecasts a further substantial decline in employment in primary

industries, especially in agriculture, manufacturing and production. The main

areas of employment growth are services, especially marketed services,

distribution and transport. By 2020, almost three quarters of jobs in EU-25+ in

2020 will be in the services sector.14

At present, there are 434,700 unemployed in Ireland15. The average cost to

the state is 20,000 per person annually when the job seeker allowance or

benefit and tax take loss to the exchequer is taken into account. This amounts

to 8.7 billion annually as a cost to the state. or23,819,178 per day.

To quote from Building Irelands Smart Economy - A Framework for

Sustainable Economic Renewal (December 2008):

A key feature of [the Smart Economy] is building the innovation or ideas

component of the economy through the utilisation of human capital - the

knowledge, skills and creativity of people - and its ability and effectiveness in

translating ideas into valuable processes, products and services.

Ireland cannot afford to leave anyone behind in the drive to improve the skills

and competencies of our work force and to ensure that workers possess the

skills required to service a Smart economy.

Employability

According to a recent UK report, the Independent Review of ICT User Skills16,

over the last 20 years, the proportion of people using IT in their job in the UK

has nearly doubled to 77%, with an estimated 22m17 people using technology

14http://www.igfse.pt/upload/docs/gabdoc/2008/10-Out/BN_2008_09_en.pdf 15

http://www.inou.ie/policy/statistics.html16Independent Review of ICT User Skills, Baroness Estelle Morris, June 2009 17Digital Britain: Creating Skills for the Digital Economy, submission to Lord Carter byeSkills UK and Skillset, 2009


17/17


at work. For the remaining 6m people in the workforce, these skills may not be

critical for their employer but they remain important life skills. The same can

easily be said for Ireland.

Increasingly, employers advertise jobs solely online, and recruitment

processes are increasingly electronic. More employers are making use of the

latest web 2.0 technology (such as sites like LinkedIn) to recruit employees,

and increasingly employers are using or considering using e-learning, as a

means to train employees. Evidence from research18 by the National

Research and Development Centre for Adult literacy and numeracy shows a

link between the development of Digital Life Skills and employability. Those

people who are already digitally excluded are more likely to suffer

unemployment in a time of recession. A lack of basic ICT skills will be a

disadvantage in both finding and securing a new job.

A recent study by UK Online clearly showed that adults who were able to use

ICT were 25% more confident about finding a job than non-users.19

Providing digital literacy training will prepare this unemployed segment

for the rapidly growing services sector of the Smart Economy.

Adults who are able to use ICT are 25% more confident about finding a

job than non-users.

18

The Digital Divide: Computer Use, Basic Skills and Employment. A Comparative Study in Portland, USA and

London, England, NRDC, Oct 200819 Does the internet improve lives?, UK online and Freshminds, March 2009

Documents

White Paper Digital Skills