Two types of digital skills and why they matter
Talk of the ‘digital skills gap’ is commonplace – the idea that there is a significant difference between the level of digital skills the future economy will require and the level we currently have, or seem likely to have in the future based on current trends. A good example of this was the report “The Global Digital Skills Gap”, published recently by the Rand Corporation. One of the report’s headline findings states:
“While the demand for digital skills is high, supply is low, and businesses often struggle to find talent for digital roles.” (p.5)
It is an important discussion but in my view this, and similar reports are hampered by some vagueness around the definition of digital skills. The definition adopted, following UNESCO, is as follows:
“…the range of abilities required to use digital devices, communication applications and networks to access and manage information”. (p.7)
This is broken down into various sub-categories, but misses a critical distinction. There are different types of digital skills, and if we are going to address a gap, it matters which type we are talking about.
The starting point for my argument is the book “Digital Skills”, by van Deursen & van Dijk which, although published in 2014 is to my knowledge the most comprehensive analysis so far of the topic, based on research conducted on thousands of people. The authors propose a six-layer taxonomy of skills which specifically relate to digital media and especially the internet. These are operational, formal, information, communication, content creation and strategic skills. These are distinct and can be measured separately. But for our purposes I think we can adapt their thesis and simplify these skills into two – operational and strategic.
Operational skills are technical competencies, referred to by the authors as “button knowledge”. These are the skills required to work a piece of software – at its simplest level, for example, I can click the back button on my browser to go back. It gets much more complex than that of course but the logic is consistent. This is the skill of the person who can edit a document in Word, change their settings on social media or, at a much higher level, build a machine learning model using Python. It is how you can get software to do something.
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Strategic skills do not start with the software but with a goal. How can you use technology to make a business more efficient? To become more effective in your working practices? To manage your personal finances better? To become better informed about a certain topic? In order to have strategic skills, you must be able to clarify what you want to do, select the appropriate technology tool to do it, and then utilise your operational skills to make the tool do what you want it to do.
To give an example, knowing how to manage updates and post on LinkedIn is a (fairly simple) operational skill. Using LinkedIn in an intentional way to keep informed and build your professionals network is a (perhaps more challenging) strategic skill. For a finance professional, building a robust financial model using Excel is an operational skill. Designing and using the model in a way that will support good decision-making is a strategic skill.
So there is a hierarchical relationship between these two types of skill. If you do not have good operational skills, it is impossible to have good strategic skills. You cannot make decisions about what technology tool to use unless you understand the tools available and you cannot achieve your goals unless you know how to use them. But the converse is not true. You may be adept in using all kinds of software but hopeless at using them to achieve anything worthwhile for yourself and others.
Why is this important in addressing the digital skills gap? Very often solutions proposed comprise technical training – we need more schoolchildren to learn to code, for example, or more training in how to use standard business tools. But if we consider the two types of digital skills, we can see that these initiatives are necessary but not sufficient. We need to improve the general level of operational skills but we absolutely cannot stop there. We also need to undertake the more complex task of improving strategic skills – getting better at thinking about what we really want to achieve, evaluating alternatives and implementing solutions to get there.
At a personal level, this means it’s always a good idea to keep learning how to use new tools that may be useful in your work and life. But also consider your goals for your work and personal life and be intentional about how technology can help or hinder you in getting there. If we are going to address the digital skills gap, we need to recognise that digital skills are as much about ends as means.
Great article, Daniel. I'm particularly interested in the level of operational knowledge required to make strategic decisions. My belief is that strategic leaders need a good understanding of operational functionality but they don't need the technical skills to actually build them (i.e. to drive a car, I need to know what it does but don't need to know the intricate mechanics). With accountancy institutes encouraging their members to increase their digital literacy, I see some professional accountants over-emphasising operational skills over strategic ones. Clients sometimes ask me to train them in using the 'best' current software when what they really need is an understanding of the processes, opportunities and threats technology is creating. In other words, accountants should not aim to become IT experts, but they will need to manage them.
Helen Jamieson FHEA one for our discussions 👍🏻
Its a good attempt but there are a couple of rather large assumptions and oversights. Most obviously, that strategic, more accurately, tactical deployment of tools is fully integrated with performance reporting; using MS Word is more about how many readers and the socio-economic and geographical distribution of the readership. For example, current learners fully appreciate the value of liking and subscribing in relation to using a digital camera, digital editing and effects, and the online presentation. Next is button skills, which underestimates some critically important, and sorely lacking, digital skills. Just using the Bookmarks Bar on a Browser, categorising bookmarks into folders to create personalised dropdown navigation, is a practice that everybody benefits from but, in my experience of CPD training and learner inductions, only 1 in 5 leaners, faculty members, and managers apply. Windows Explorer is another example, but only 1 in 50 have even come across the availability of personalised navigation. The principal oversight is that it is nether operational nor technical that is the foundation of effectively using digital tools. With the speed of development being exponential, it is the capacity to frame the question to access the current state-of-the-art low/no cost, integrated, powerful and easy to use tools. What has been a noticeable pattern is that new tools are all starting to generally replicate existing tools and the USPs are more and more simply cost, ease of use, and the capacity to integrate. The next big leap forward is entirely from the application of digital tools, or what new forms can capture the attention of rich corporations, all of which employ people that also fully appreciate the value of likes and subscribes.