- Australia’s tech industry is on track to create 1.2 million tech jobs by 2030 – filling those jobs is the challenge.
- The National Skills Commission estimates skills clustered around the digital economy will increase 28% between 2022 and 2027.
- Lightcast found around 40% of Victoria’s job ads in February 2020 called for digital skills.
Digitisation, digital tools and automation are changing the way Victoria operates – and creating new opportunities.
Today’s mechanic is tomorrow’s electric vehicle technician. Health carers and professionals enhance their clinical practice with medical technology. Drones and agtech machinery transform farming practices. The Internet of Things allows Victorian firms to monitor machinery around the globe.
Through advances in technology, new business models can be put in place, work practices can be enhanced, digital businesses can be created and the digital services industry can grow.
Digitisation can accelerate jobs
Innovation and efficiency resulting from digitisation and automation can create new higher-level jobs, including new technology jobs.
In 2019, an analysis of Australian industry concluded that 2.7 million jobs could be lost to automation over the 15 years to 2034 – with 4.5 million augmented by technology. But jobs grow overall.
Digitisation and automation affects jobs and workers differently.
Workers whose jobs are at risk could find digitisation creates new opportunities; but those opportunities require new digital skills. Workers whose jobs are augmented by technology will need new digital skills to use that technology. Workers without basic digital skills will need access to training to ensure they have the skills to find a good, secure job.
Digitisation and automation graph
Digital skills are the new core skills for work
There are three domains of digital skills
- Digital Foundations
The basic understanding of digital tools and how to use them. - Digital Application
The ability to apply and adapt digital tools and software in work practices. - Tech Jobs
Advanced understanding and use of digital approaches and tools.
Although these skills apply differently, depending upon the industry and the work context, several things are clear.
Digital foundations are basic skills needed to engage productively online – at work and in society. The International Labour Organisation describes this as the ability to use basic software and hardware and to operate safely in an online environment.
Digital applications will soon become the new benchmark for effective workers. Many of the new skills for success in work relate to data analytics, software design, testing and application and the integration of tools into work practices. This includes occupations previously regarded as craft or operator roles.
Tech jobs require an advanced understanding of digital tools and practice as the starting point, leading up to specialist and research roles critical to keeping Victoria at the technology frontier.
Digital skills are not limited to the sterile application of technology. Art, aesthetics and understanding human and group behaviours bring digital approaches to life for users, consumers and society more broadly.
Bringing digital skills to Victoria
The Victorian Government’s Digital Strategy 2021-2026 identifies skills as central to growing digital capabilities and ensuring fair access to opportunities.
This step up in digital skills requires responses across the Victorian economy
- Businesses: need their workers to be able to access training for the digital uplift.
- Workers: need assurance they can access training to build their core digital skills.
- Students: need to know their course will deliver the core digital skills for the career they are pursuing.
- All Victorians: need to know that those who lack foundation digital skills and risk joblessness have access to targeted support, through education and training, to build these skills.
The education and training model
Building digital capability starts in school and is a central tenet of the Victorian curriculum. Foundations such as systems thinking and logic, mathematics and science are taught at school and underpin success in digital skills.
Deep digital skills are built progressively through coherent curriculum and well-structured learning through qualification streams.
Victoria’s vocational education and training sector needs new approaches to curriculum and qualifications design that develop digital capabilities as the learning outcome. This reflects the fact that digital capabilities apply across industries and occupations.
Currently, higher education provides most entry preparations for digital professionals. The growth and speed of digital transformation means this path alone is insufficient; VET entry level qualifications for the tech industry need to be lifted.
Industry feedback indicates that the skills required for many new roles are a blend of higher education and applied vocational learning, with capacity to learn on the job if the foundation knowledge is in place.
The VSA will work with the education and training system, and the tech industry, to build the steps for success in digital transformation – to build the tech industry itself and develop digital workers to support businesses to move to new levels of productivity.
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