Digital Techniques and Digital Skills in Organisations and Government in South Africa: An Environmental Scan
Keywords:
Digital skills, Organisations, Work environment, Digital Age, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Computer skillsSynopsis
The National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA) has a mandate to ensure that South Africans have the necessary digital skills to participate in the 4IR. A part of the mandate is to establish an innovative and collaborative network focusing on digital skills with links to industry, academia, government and not-for-profit sectors both locally and internationally. The aim of the network is to “provide the evidence-based basis, through research and other available means, for decisions on how to innovatively address the opportunities and systemic challenges in achieving digital skills capacity in South Africa”.
This environmental scan report research report represents the beginning of a research journey that seeks to identify the changing nature of digital skills in South Africa as a result of technological advancements, more popularly known as the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). The 4IR represents the current era of an inter connectedness of things biological, physical and non-physical as a result of the rapid advancements in technological innovations. The innovations have resulted in new types of specialised skills required for new types of work while at the same time causing some previously routine skills to become obsolete.
