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The digital revolution requires governments to invest in new skills and capabilities to enable digital transformation in societies and enhance digital governance. However not all public institutions are equally well prepared and often have critical gaps in digital skills.

That is why UNESCO, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (GIZ) organized a workshop on digital capacity building at the International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Government and Digital Capacity Building (ICEGOV) in Portugal on 7 October 2022.

With researchers and development practitioners worldwide, the workshop identified pathways to digital capacity building in government and discussed the Digital Capacity Building Navigator tool being jointly developed by the four partner organizations in line with the UN Secretary General's Roadmap on Digital Cooperation. This Joint Facility for Global Digital Capacity Development arises in support of the Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, which launches a broad multi-stakeholder network to promote holistic, inclusive approaches to digital capacity-building for sustainable development.

In addition to supporting the broad Multi-Stakeholder Network, the Joint Facility partners work together on curating a resource base of existing digital skills trainings and have convened a multi-stakeholder network promoting a more holistic and inclusive approach to digital capacity development.

This Joint Facility led by UNDP, UNESCO, ITU and GIZ, brings together partners and expertise in order to improve the accessibility of digital capacity building opportunities. Jacqueline TsumaDigital Ecosystem Capacity Development Specialist at UNDP

What is the Digital Capacity Building Navigator?

The Digital Capacity Building Navigator tool facilitates capacity-building efforts at scale. It helps policymakers, regulators, technical advisors and civil servants assess their digital transformation competencies and find relevant learning resources to support their needs.

The Digital Capacity Building Navigator links to open educational resources, in form of openly licensed and openly accessible learning materials on AI and digital transformation from partners across the globe. The tool is directed at interested learners to support them in discovering the courses and training opportunities most relevant to their interests and needs.

The mock-up of the Digital Capacity Building Navigator was presented to the workshop participants to gather feedback on its features and ways to incentivize its use by policymakers. The next phase of the navigator tool design will involve user testing of the self-assessment questions with policymakers, regulators, technical advisors and civil servants.

Openly accessible competency definitions and frameworks

The Navigator is based on an openly accessible competency framework developed through a multistakeholder process led by UNESCO and Nokia at the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development.

Eric Shepherd, author of the book Talent Transformation, underlined that open competency definitions and frameworks can be leveraged to provide more transparency by aligning competencies individuals acquire through educational programmes and those found in job descriptions.

Insights for digital capacity building Different approaches to digital capacity building are being implemented worldwide. Dr Gianluca Misuraca, Executive Director, AI4Gov underlined that the AI4GOV masters programme, funded by the European Commission, aims to bring advanced digital skills closer to non-technical people through networking and hands-on learning through use cases and projects.

To develop AI foresight and awareness in the public sector, civil servants should be exposed to interdisciplinary and project-based learning as part of a structured educational curriculum or professional training. Gianluca MisuracaExecutive Director, AI4Gov

GIZ’s project FAIR Forward – AI for All, an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, aims to support localized AI development. Their approach to capacity building involved a four-month long peer-learning programme to enhance the capacities of policymakers from Africa and Asia to respond to AI. The learning modules from this programme are openly available in the form of a Handbook for Implementing a Capacity Building Programme for Policy Makers on AI, but also in the form of a self-paced learning programme hosted on the atingi learning platform. Both the handbook and the course are openly licensed as OER and can be replicated and adapted by other partners wishing to use the materials.

Cross-country exchange on AI policies, data governance and institutional readiness strategies are an important part of our project. Together, we hope to create inclusive and sustainable approaches to AI policy that reflect the perspectives of the Global South and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.  Kim Sophie SchulteHead of AI Hub Rwanda at GIZ

URL: 

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/enabling-policy-makers-become-digital-transformation-leaders