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 beta set of six digital competencies that are relevant to all federal public servants: 

-Digital literacy 
-Continuous improvement 
-Cybersecurity vigilance 
-Information and data stewardship 
-Digital responsibility 
-Inclusive interactions 

Created in collaboration with 29 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) and are only starting to be socialized, however, they represent a crucial step towards building a new digital culture focused on service excellence. 

Join us to hear about the beta set of six digital competencies, where you can learn them, and help us figure out how best you can apply them, and where they should go next.