Policy Brief: Digital Skills

Digital skills have attained great importance, as more of the world goes online. We know little about what works to improve digital skills, despite a proliferation of initiatives imparting digital skills globally. This report analyzes the existing digital skills practices globally to identify trends that can potentially improve digital skills training and adoption. The report also references barriers to and drivers of digital skills training.

Our research represents amongst the most comprehensive catalogs of digital skills initiatives across the world, drawing from 339 digital skills initiatives globally and 44 case studies developed through in-depth interviews with project coordinators and secondary research.

The distribution of digital skills initiatives varies by continent. Most digital skills initiatives are focused on Africa and Asia, followed by Latin America, North America, Europe, and Oceania.

There is a heightened focus on certain marginalized populations in the case studies, while attention may be needed on areas such as accessibility and senior-focused digital skills initiatives. Most initiatives among our case studies target students (43%), females (26%), and out-of-school youth (13%); the least represented groups are seniors and the disabled.

We observe that digital skills trainings are geographically bound, with a predominant focus on rural initiatives within our case studies. Half of the digital skills programs are rural (50%), while a quarter of them are focused in urban areas (25%). Only a quarter of them focus on both rural and urban areas, suggesting that there may be substantial differences in the way these programs are designed for rural vs. urban areas. Our interviews also suggested that scaling initiatives is challenging, which may explain the stark focus on a specific geographic boundaries (either rural or urban) within the initiatives.

Although there are many initiatives to teach digital skills to various communities around the world, the report finds that the methodologies including the curriculum, practices, the durations, the devices are diverse.

Most initiatives still use computers (65%) to deploy digital skills training, despite the proliferation of mobile phones across the world as the predominant mode of Internet access. Of the initiatives we studied, only a few used mobile phones (21%) and tablets (14%).

A majority of the initiatives use in-person training (84%), with a very few that use online streaming (16%). Given the proliferation of COVID-19, this distribution may be detrimental to the delivery of digital skills training programs in remote-learning settings.

While the content of the training programs varies widely, basic ICT training and literacy (55%) dominates, followed by computer and software skills (16%), entrepreneurship and vocational training (12%), innovative education (10%). Our interviews suggest that the initiatives may be out of step with the adoption patterns of general populations. This focus on basic ICT training (often on computers) may not be useful within a remote-learning setting, as the population predominantly shifts to using mobile phones for several tasks. The second-highest focus of training programs in terms of providing skills for employment and jobs is encouraging.

We also found great variation in the duration of the programs, ranging from 2 hours to 100 hours, and from an academic semester to academic year. Only 2, however, allowed for a self-paced learning option. This may disadvantage people unable to make specific times for the training, often women and girls.

Most initiatives are medium to large in terms of scale, reaching over 10,000 people. A lot of these initiatives work in partnership with other institutions such as schools, libraries, or public telecenters with nearly 42% of our case studies partnering with over 100 institutions

Most case studies were digital skills programs are initiated by NGOs (57%), followed by private sector (20%). Government initiatives were comparatively sparse (16%). This also manifested in the economic models, as 65% of the case studies relied on grant-funding, having important implications for sustainability.

Given that the majority of the digital skills training programs we profiled are offered free of charge, lack of sustained funding (13%) is the biggest challenge for the sustainability of these programs, followed by limited and irregular electricity access (9%) to maintain the programs, lack of skilled manpower (8%), lack of access to devices (7%), resistance from the community (6%), coordination challenges between local organizations and funding agencies (6%), lack of Internet access (6%), and lack of locally relevant content (6%).

The report also highlighted that we lack the evidence on what combination of digital skills methods make the most impact on these communities. Most of the initiatives measure impact through qualitative methods, with every few quantifiable impact metrics that permit cross-regional and cross-country comparisons.

Table 1: Regional Distribution of the 339 Digital Skills Programs in the Database & Case Studies

• The regional distribution of digital skills programs shows that most of the projects are concentrated in Asia and Africa, 39% and 36% respectively, with several case studies in Latin America (11%), North America (7%), Europe (5%), and Oceania (2%).
• Compared to the overall database, the case studies show a slightly higher concentration in Asia and North America and slightly lower concentration in Africa, Latin America, and Europe.

Table 2: Target Population of Digital Skills Programs Across 44 Case Studies

• The most represented groups are students (43%), females (26%), and youth (13%); the least represented groups are seniors and the disabled.

Table 3: Rural vs Urban Distribution of Digital Skills Programs Across 44 Case Studies

• The case studies show a concentration in rural context (50%) compared to urban context (25%).
• Half of the digital skills programs are rural (50%), the quarter of them are urban (25%), and the quarter of them are both rural and urban areas.

Table 4: Technology-use in Digital Skills Programs Across 44 Case Studies

*Double-counted if needed

• The technologies that is utilized the most are computers (65%), followed by mobile phones (21%), and tablets (14%).
• In terms of digital skills training delivery methods in-person training (84%) followed by online streaming (16%).

Table 5: The Content of Digital Skills Training Programs Across 44 Case Studies

• Digital skills training programs focus on a wide range of topics, but most of the content of the digital skill initiatives is basic ICT training and literacy (55%), followed by computer and software skills (16%), entrepreneurship and vocational training (12%), innovative education (10%), internet access, and modern agriculture (4% each).
• The second major focus of digital skills training is employment, which constitutes of ICT training for the workplace, business planning and project management, mentorship, leadership, and accessing remote employment.
• The third major focus of digital skills training programs focus on improving entrepreneurship skills such as how to identify and access markets and how to sell and buy online.
• Some other areas of digital skills training programs focus on gender access and use, creative expression and parenting, use of online banking services, use of e-government services, reading and writing skills, use of tele-health services, and use of ICTs for agricultural processes.

Table 6: The Duration of Digital Skills Training Programs Across 44 Case Studies

• The duration of the programs varies at a great deal, ranging from 2 hours to 100 hours, and from an academic semester to academic year.
• There are also a small number of programs which are self-paced through an application (N=2).

Table 7: The Number of People Digital Skills Programs Reached Across 44 Case Studies

• In terms of reach, 40% of the initiatives that indicated their reach in terms of individuals have a reach of 10,001 – 1 million people.
• The initiatives that indicted their reach in terms of institutions such as school, library, or kiosk show more evenly spread out among fewer than 50 (25%), 50 – 100 (33%), and more than 100 institutions (42%).

Table 8: Scale of Digital Skills Programs Across 44 Case Studies

• The scale of the projects varies with a concentration in a national level (41%).
• There are 29% of regional projects and 25% of local projects, along with a small percentage of international projects (5%).

Table 9: Economic Model of Digital Skills Programs in Database vs Case Studies

*Double-counted if needed

• The economic model of digital skills training programs is largely grant-based (65%), with 13% funded from CSR activities, 11% from the government, and 11% from the subscription model.
• Compared to the overall database, the case studies reflected a lower reliance on the grants and higher reliance on subscription models and CSR activities.

Table 10: Stakeholder Group of Digital Skills Training Programs in Database vs Case Studies

• The majority of the digital skills programs are initiated by NGOs (57%), followed by private sector (20%), government (16%), volunteer-led civil societies (5%), and academia (2%).
• The overall database shows higher engagement from the NGOs (68% compared to 57%) and Academia (6% compared to 2%), while the participation from governments and private sector are much lower than the case studies at 12% and 9% respectively.

Table 11: Impact Indicators of Digital Skills Training Programs Across 44 Case Studies

*Double-counted if needed

• The impact indicators of the digital skill projects can be grouped into seven groups: employment (29%), academic performance (18%), empowerment (15%), digital literacy skills (15%), communication and engagement (13%), financial wellness (7%), and health (4%).
• In terms of employment, programs examine employment opportunities, employability, skills acquisition, to what extent the participants pursue a career in ICT, entrepreneurship, internship or job acquisition.
• In terms of academic performance, programs measure educational outcomes, learning achievements, grade improvement, school performance, test scores, and graduation rates.
• In terms of empowerment, programs look at social support and inclusion gained through Internet use, reduction in child marriage rates, and family integrity and cohesion.
• In terms of digital skills, programs measure skill acquisition and improvement and use case of Internet.
• In terms of communication, programs examine to what extent the communication is improved among family and friends, students and teachers, teachers and parents, and community.

Table 12: Methods Used to Measure Impact of Digital Skills Programs Across 44 Case Studies

• The impact of the digital skills training programs is largely measured qualitatively (63%), surveying participants at the end of the training.
• Smaller portion of the digital skills training programs use quantitative methods (33%), looking at metric such as attendance rates or test scores.
• A few number of digital skills training programs use both qualitative and quantitative methods to measure their impact (5%).

Table 13: Top Self-Reported Challenges of Digital Skills Training Programs in Case Studies

*Double-counted if needed

• Given that the majority of the digital skills training programs that target most marginal groups are free of charge, lack of sustained funding (13%) is the biggest challenge for the sustainability of these programs, followed by limited and irregular electricity access (9%) to maintain the programs, lack of skilled manpower (8%), lack of access to devices (7%), resistance from the community (6%), coordination challenges between local organizations and funding agencies (6%), lack of Internet access (6%), and lack of locally relevant content (6%).

About 1 World Connected

1 World Connected is a research project of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania. The project seeks to provide detailed, contextualized data through case studies of grassroots projects around the world. We have compiled a first-of-its-kind database spanning more than 1000 such initiatives from more than 50 countries, and compiled, through semi-structured interviews, 120 case studies on both demand- and supply-side efforts. Demand-side efforts are designed to encourage adoption and use. Supply-side efforts aim to extend Internet coverage.

The project is significant in two ways. First, it provides a grassroots-level understanding of what works and what does not in different contexts. Second, it aggregates lessons from numerous community-level initiatives all over the world and analyses emerging trends.

The goals of the project are three-fold:

1. To provide meaningful, systematically compiled and analyzed data on grassroots project with diverse funding sources, stakeholder groups and technologies across the world;
2. to bring together a community of project owners, investors, government actors, and more to communicate about projects;
3. to analyze policy levers that matter to improve the success of the future initiatives.