Growing Australia’s digital workforce

Unique opportunity for vetsector

Relevance and transferability of skills

The speed at which technology is changing the way we work, learn, travel, get healthcare, and communicate with each other continues to accelerate. It took 16 years for mobile phones to reach 100 million users worldwide, while TikTok gained 100 million users in just nine months.

This trend highlights the urgent need for a reformed, agile VET sector that can keep pace with the speed of technological change. Recent breakthroughs in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) have brought this need into even sharper focus.

While Artificial Intelligence recognises patterns such as speech or pictures, GAI can generate all sorts of new text, music, and art within seconds. ChatGPT is the language generator that has received the most attention. It reached 100 million users just two months after its November 2022 launch.

GAI is already having a significant impact on training and the skills required in the workplace, providing a unique opportunity for VET to transform and lead the delivery of practical and just in time new skills that everybody will need.

“ChatGPT isn’t just challenging educational assessment, it’s transforming a lot of white-collar work that VET educates people for. It’s vital the DSO keeps the sector on top of these changes”

Claire Field
Principal, Claire Field & Associates

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About the Digital Skills Organisation

The Digital Skills Organisation (DSO) was established in 2020 by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR; formerly Department of Education, Skills and Employment) as one of three industry-led Skills Organisation Pilots, alongside Human Services and Mining.

Its establishment was as a result of the Australian Government’s ‘Strengthening Skills: Expert Review of Australia’s Vocational Education and Training System’ 2019 report. This recognised emerging evidence of a growing supply and demand gap for workers with digital skills, and system barriers to closing this gap.

DEWR described DSO’s remit to “shape the national training system, testing innovative solutions to ensure digital training meets the skills needs of employers and builds Australia’s digital workforce”.

The funding period was for three years to June 2023. Subsequently, the introduction of ten Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) from June 2023 provides the opportunity to consider how learnings from the DSO trials can inform work priorities for the Finance, Technology and Business (FTB) JSC.

Acknowledgements

The DSO acknowledges the collaboration and input to the work of the DSO of the Tech Council of Australia (TCA), Australian Computer Society (ACS), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), Digital Employment Forum (DEF), VET (Vocational Education and Training) peak associations, including the TAFE Working Group, the Australian Government departments and agencies, state and territory governments, training providers, community groups and schools. The DSO also acknowledges the range of organisations and individuals who have contributed to, or participated in, the trials undertaken as part of the DSO’s work.

About this report

This report is a contribution to fulfilling the DSO’s remit. Specifically, it seeks to:

Define Australia’s current and future digital skilling needs, including assessing supply and demand gaps
Synthesise the activities and progress the DSO has made to address Australia’s digital skilling needs, and the potential to close the skilling gap
Identify opportunities for the JSC for FTB to continue collaboration with governments, industry, unions, registered training organisations, community groups and the other nine JSCs to progress Australia’s national approach to digital skilling.

The report draws on a range of quantitative and qualitative research and analytics inputs. This includes workforce and skills data insights, analysis of data from the training sector, insights from industry engagement, and evaluation of DSO trials.

Further information about the technical elements of the method is included in Appendix A.