Digital transformation changes the way governments work: how they deliver services, communicate with their citizens and organise internally.

Public servants no longer have the luxury of being analogue. Whether they’re digital natives or techno-immigrants, they need to think digital first.

But digital skills mean more than knowledge of building algorithms or platforms. People skills are just as important as technical expertise when it comes to digital projects: learning how to work quickly, share knowledge with one another and rebuild after making mistakes.

What do we mean when we talk about digital skills?

UNESCO defines digital skills as using digital devices, communication applications and networks to access and manage information. These skills then enable others to create and share digital content to help solve problems.

Entry-level skills — the basic, functional capabilities required to make use of digital devices and online applications — are now as critical for the workplace as traditional knowledge of reading, writing and numeracy.

Workers with advanced abilities can go far beyond this, shaping machine learning and big data analytics to solve complex problems.

“Digital transformation cannot happen without workforce transformation”

This could, for instance, include working with GovTech — innovative technology built for government by the private or public sector, designed to make government more innovative, agile and development-oriented.

The technical side of digital and GovTech skills is really important. But it cannot be viewed in isolation.

In order to thrive in government, public servants must possess these technical skills, but they must function in tandem with softer strengths, such as the ability to think critically, collaborate and bring others on board with a project.

The OECD agrees. Officials must be iterative, experimental and learn quickly from their mistakes, it argues in Core Skills for Public Sector Innovation. They must be able to explain the journey they’re on clearly to someone else. Fundamentally, they must ensure that users say “I would do that again”.

Lecturer Rebekah Eden from the Queensland University of Technology said that “digital transformation cannot happen without workforce transformation”. If big projects are going to succeed, they need to be driven by a digitally confident workforce.

And like any government work, digital transformation is all about building networks of people. Tech alone is not enough.

Why invest in digital skills in government?

UNESCO says that digital skills have moved from “optional” to “critical” choices.

Digital, in the first instance, saves money. The UK think tank, the Institute for Government, estimated that the UK Government alone would save between ÂŁ1.3 and ÂŁ2 billion by 2020 by investing in digital services.

Inevitably, governments feel the pressure to keep up with the private sector. The Singapore Government goes above and beyond to match its thriving tech industry. It co-creates solutions with businesses outside, such as its public-private research and design centres, and actively collaborates with industry to develop new government services.

“It’s like the space race… everyone is doing the same thing as you. So you need to do it the fastest”

Digital also demands that civil servants speed up their working practices. Argentina found this when they built and delivered a system to upgrade 19 million driving licences in just 65 days. By choosing a popular service, the team set themselves a huge challenge, completed over the course of one summer — famously government’s fallow period.

Daniel Abadie, Argentina’s Undersecretary of Digital Government, was urged by internal pressure to pursue simple projects quickly.

“It’s like the space race… everyone is doing the same thing as you. So you need to do it the fastest,” he said.

What are the misconceptions around digital skills in government?

While many agree for the need for digital skills in government, the same skills are not universal. While lessons can be learnt and projects can be transferable, the Punjab has different digital needs to Portugal.

In some countries and some government departments, digital training means learning about artificial intelligence, nanotechnology or the Internet of Things. In Singapore, for instance, all Ministry families must have one AI-led project.

But for somewhere like Myanmar, it could mean something as basic as training all its civil servants in digital literacy by 2023. Paraguay uses continuous training programmes, which pairs training on digital skills with organizational and motivational leadership.

While essential for progress, digital infrastructure is not enough to ensure effective digital delivery. Infrastructure means very little if you lack the people behind it to drive it forwards.

This approach was taken to heart by Israel, where the government took a people-first approach, seeking people to rethink and redesign processes with the user at the centre. They sought out potential policymakers from outside of government, recruiting data scientists and anthropologists.

Tech alone can’t do the heavy lifting for you. Sometimes older technology can work better than innovative AI — but sometimes it takes user-centricity, a key skill, to realise that.

Pakistan found this when trialling SMS messages to engage student council leaders. At first, the program had little impact. When researchers went back, they realised that despite the high penetration of mobile phones, the technology had limited appeal as many of those targeted by the messages couldn’t read.

Shifting the tech from text messages to phone calls meant that response rates went up. The solution was to consider user needs first when designing a policy.

What are the challenges of implementing digital skills in government, and how can they be countered?

Building a digital infrastructure, and the digital capacity to match, can be treated as silver bullets by governments wanting to innovate at speed. But there are various challenges to successfully implementing digital skills programs.

Firstly, investing in new digital infrastructure can be expensive. The UK Government’s flagship “Universal Credit” digital welfare program had already cost almost £2 billion over eight years by June 2018. Governments have to be comfortable taking a risk on digital investment, safe in the knowledge that it will likely pay dividends.

Governments are not start-ups. Scaling training can prove a particular challenge.

Recruiting digital skills into government can also prove a difficult challenge. While government jobs come with prestige, they’re often less well paid than their private sector equivalents. There are also bureaucratic hurdles to jump, such as long hiring processes and competencies to learn.

Singapore faced this challenge head on by matching private and public sector salaries, but this often isn’t an option. Israel and Italy offered secondments for private sector workers, so that they could work in the government for a few years, before returning to the private sector.

Governments are not start-ups. While trials are common practice, there’s an assumption that in order to succeed, they have to operate at scale very quickly. Scaling training can prove a particular challenge.

The UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) found that it was delivering effective and interesting training on publishing to its public-facing platform — but that it couldn’t be successfully scaled. Interest was high because of the content changes required due to the UK’s exit from the European Union.

The whole training was redesigned, to take it from a two-day classroom session with no assessment, to a half-day training focused on real-world scenarios and an assessment for participants. This shift in training meant that GDS could now train four times as many people, without taking up any additional trainer time.

And when knowledge is accrued, it is often done so in isolation. This means that developing countries do not benefit from the digital expertise of other, more developed nations.

The World Bank’s ID4D program is seeking to counter this. After Peru spent decades of work achieving near universal identification following civil insurvency, they were rightly identified as a leader in the field.

The World Bank led a delegation of civil servants from Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea to visit Peru, learning about the challenges they faced in implementing their digital system. Knowledge exchanges like this can break down siloes of innovation between countries, and allow civil servants to learn from one another.

[Photo credit: Unsplash/Alissa de Leva]