Even with the proliferation of email, smartphones, and apps, nearly a third of U.S. workers lack digital skills at a time when more than 90% of jobs require some digital skills aptitude, according to a study by the National Skills Coalition (NSC).

“That is significant in a universe in which 92% of those 43 million job ads said digital skills were important,” says Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, NSC senior fellow.

“So, if you have 31% of workers who haven’t had the opportunity to build those foundational skills, and 92% of jobs are requiring digital skills, there’s a disconnect there.”

While we may think of digital skills being needed just in “tech” jobs, in fact they are needed in all industries, from health care to property management to farming.

Navigating Digital Systems

Trying to resolve the skills gap requires a few considerations, including defining, categorizing, and “matchmaking” digital skills.

First, the definition. “Being able to utilize technology and the internet to access and thrive,” is how Annmarie Lanesey, founder and chief executive officer of CanCode Communities describes a digital skill.

“It’s being able to navigate digital systems, whether it’s an app, whether it’s an internet webpage, whether it’s a mobile phone, to be able to accomplish those four things – earn, learn, be well, and live well,” says Kenneth Sherin, Ph.D., broadband access and education coordinator and county extension director for the North Carolina Extension at Randolph County Center.

Bergson-Shilcock takes it a step further to differentiate digital skills as “foundational” and ”industry-specific” or “specialized.”

Foundational examples include sending emails, downloading and installing apps on a mobile phone, using basic office software, navigate a website to submit a resume.

Industry-specific or specialized skills could include using electronic medical or property management software, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Day-to-Day Use of Digital Skills

Sherin’s programs address both, and serve North Carolinians at various stages of using digital skills and devices for their day-to-day lives and jobs. It could be helping them set up an email account or how to log into their health portal to access medical information. A nutrition expert is helping people improve their health with a digital tool that helps with nutrition planning.

For job training, his office sees younger people who are adept at using social media and accessing apps, but they don’t know etiquette around Zoom calls.

Agricultural agents are helping farmers with their operations, teaching them digital technology for precision agriculture, and how to use what may be common devices for new purposes.

For example, farmers with cows having calves need to monitor the temperature of the barn and the status of the cow about to give birth. Instead of waking every two hours, heading to the barn and looking in, a video monitoring system can be set up so the farmer can set alarms and check from their bedside using a laptop.

“A lot of it is not high-tech stuff. It’s like a Ring doorbell camera on your home. But it’s not been accessible to farms, and [farmers] are learning how to adapt and use this technology,” Sherin says.

In the 10 months that North Carolina Extension has offered digital skills, Sherin says 1,200 people have taken advantage of their programs.

Creating a More Diverse Talent Pool

When Lanesey founded Albany Can Code in 2016, she also had the goal to help develop a diverse, local talent pool through technology and digital literacy.

“It was very obvious to me that we need more diversity. And so, we set out to create this more diverse ecosystem – women, people of color, veterans, people from challenging economic backgrounds,” she says. “We want to create more pipelines, people who may not be on a traditional educational pathway…individuals with diverse with disabilities. Older adults, people who come to our training programs that are looking for a career change. That could be later in life, much later in life.”

Now known as CanCode Communities, the nonprofit also offers programs for K-12 and has expanded across the state of New York, Western Massachusetts, and Alabama. Coding, design, and even AI are among the available trainings; some are also in Spanish.

Most people (95%) receive tuition assistance based on need. So far, 4,000 individuals (about 400 a year) have taken trainings with the organization, which also offers job matching. More than 50% of CanCode Communities trainees report a wage increase of roughly $20,000.

More than providing courses, what Lanesey wants is to be a resource for digital fluency.

“We do more than just traditional tech sector skills like programming skills. We do what we call digital skills all across the digital fluency spectrum. We believe that any digital skill, no matter where you are on the digital fluency spectrum, there will always be more learning, even the most digitally fluent people are learning about new technologies all the time. So, we do from beginner to beyond,” she says.

CanCode Communities can provide laptops and hotspots for trainees who need them and Sherin admits that with his programs, access to broadband can be a barrier. Bergson-Shilcock notes simple access to the equipment isn’t enough; if a computer is too old and lagging, or there’s only one device for multiple users. All these factors prevent robust exposure or training to digital skills.

In addition to finding solutions to these challenges, Bergson-Shilcock would like to explore the concept of digital resilience.

“It’s not so much that I need to teach a class where Victoria or Amanda memorizes one particular piece of software. I need to teach a class where Victoria or Amanda is able to sit down and encounter a novel piece of software for the first time and be comfortable navigating and figuring out, ‘Okay, what do I know about this? That reminds me of other software I’ve used. What are things I have questions about? Who would I go to with those questions?’” she explains.

“There’s not yet an assessment that does a really good job of measuring digital resilience. There are some very smart people working on this question, but nobody’s quite cracked it yet.”