Initiated by tech consultancy AND Digital, a UK-wide initiative was launched last week with participants from the private, public and third sector. The growing digital skills gap in the UK has been at the forefront of government and companies’ strategies over the past years but a holistic approach across the nation remains hard to achieve.

At the inaugural meeting in Birmingham on Wednesday 29 November, 100+ leaders from across the UK discussed the state of the nation when it comes to digital skills.

It’s widely acknowledged that the lack of digital skills is a major factor in the UK’s productivity gap, and the nation lags behind the rest of the G7 economies in this regard. Until the population at large is comfortable using and understanding the technology that powers innovation, productivity and growth will be stifled.

The Digital Skills Forum is a community-driven initiative that aims to build the skills of the UK workforce, foster peer-to-peer connections, and bring critical digital skills into the workplace.

The forum is focused on broader digital skills beyond just coding, including analytics, data literacy, and the soft skills that drive commercial and personal success. The forum will engage with both the UK Government and the Digital Skills Council to share experiences, promote open dialogue, and create shared solutions based on the collective passion and expertise of its members.

AND Digital’s hub executive for Scotland, Simon Holden, comments: “The Digital Skills Forum aims to support and complement the important work of the Digital Skills Council in addressing the skills shortage, by encouraging people and organisations to lean in, work with the skills they already have, and build from there.

“In doing this, it’s important to promote wider adoption of the Essential Digital Skills Framework – ensuring that working-age adults in the UK possess the 20 requirements needed to be deemed “digitally competent”, thereby closing their digital skills gaps.”

The forum will identify topics for investigation and devise experiments or collect data to support those topics. The agenda for the quarterly meetings scheduled in 2024 will be workstream driven, reflecting updates and achievements, rather than simply exploring topics of the day.

Holden continues: “To this end, the formation of working groups is a key action. The first topics to form actions around are Apprenticeships and Gen AI – but these are not exclusive. In the inaugural event we also covered diversity and inclusion as key topics.”

Alistair Forbes, founding director and CEO of Scottish Tech Army, applauds the initiative: “The Digital Skills challenge in the UK is a multifaceted problem that has far reaching consequences for the competitiveness of the UK economy. While there are many initiatives that are working to address this issue, the fragmentation of these initiatives is in itself a challenge.

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“This forum brings together participants, partners and thinkers to help frame the most important topics in the Digital Skills world, and how we use the unique fusion of industry, education and practical experience to frame initiatives that can be put to the Digital Skills Council or simply put to the test. We look forward to working together on solutions that can raise the bar across the whole workforce in the public, private and third sectors.”

The forum will reconvene late March 2024, while a steering committee is being formed, as well as the aforementioned working groups. Quarterly meetings will take place across the UK with gatherings planned in London, Edinburgh and Leeds.