DCMS launches wide-ranging audit of UK’s digital specialists

Recently-rebadged digital department asks businesses: where are your digital skills gaps?

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has hired consultants to try and find out how digitally-savvy the UK workforce is.

A newly-launched “Review of Advanced and Specialist Digital Skills” is currently being carried out by Pye Tait Consulting on behalf of DCMS’s Digital Skills and Inclusion Team.

The wide-ranging online survey – open to any organisation of any size and not just digital specialist businesses – is pitched at senior managers, and asks them to give an honest take on the “volume, characteristics, skills and qualifications of people working in advanced and specialist digital roles”.


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Topics covered include whether organisations have their own in-house digital specialists or use contractors; the age breakdown of those staff; whether remote working is becoming the norm in digital roles; and whether managers feel able to recruit the talent they need in the current labour market.

Respondents are also asked to rate digital learning opportunities available in the UK, including whether the school curriculum does enough to encourage students to pursue digital specialist careers.

Employers are then given the chance to rate how easy it is to recruit digital specialists in several major categories, including strategy and service delivery, software and systems, design, development, data analysis and cyber security.

According to the department – which in July added the word ‘Digital’ to its name in a bid to reflect an expanded policy remit – the new research will help it to “understand the UK’s current and future advanced and specialist digital skills needs”.

It adds: “The findings will help DCMS as it develops policy to address the digital skills challenge and works to develop the UK’s advanced and specialist digital skills pipeline to meet industry demand.” 

Matt.foster

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