Raising the bar: The six beta digital competencies for all public servants

Berlin’s CDO Martina Klement announced the city’s “Digital Competence Check”, inspired by the European Union’s Digital Competence Framework. This underscores a pressing need: in the latest FWD50 Content Survey, it asked “should government employees be required to pass a digital literacy test?”. 71% of respondents checked “yes”.
The Government of Canada recognizes the need to increase modern skills across the federal public service. 

A common baseline of modern skills is required: this applies to all public servants, from front-line service providers to policy analysts to leaders. To measure digital competence, we first need to define what it means to be digitally competent and provide the resources for people to gain and apply them.  We, at TBS, just finished building a set of six digital competencies that are relevant to all federal public servants.

Created in collaboration with 30 departments and agencies and over 200 working group members over 17 iterations, the six digital competencies are definitions that can be used for skills-based approaches across learning resources and programs, recruitment activities, hiring practices, and allows us to meaningfully measure digital skills capacity and gaps. 

The competencies don’t come with a test (yet), however, they represent a crucial step towards building a new digital culture focused on service excellence. 

Join us to hear about the GC's new set of six digital competencies and our next steps!