Using data to advocate for digital skills

Skills advocates and digital inclusion advocates frequently ask National Skills Coalition for examples of how their peers are collecting, analyzing, and using data for advocacy. In this blog post, we’re happy to highlight several reports that use data about digital skills in creative ways.

Advocates can borrow questions from these studies to use (with acknowledgement!) in their own data collection. Using storytelling frames developed by peer organizations and piggybacking on existing measures or question banks allows advocates to benefit from prior work while adding a local twist to illustrate the impact of these issues in their communities. Advocates can also juxtapose their findings with peers’ data to see how issues may be similar or different across jurisdictions.

The reports highlighted in this post are:

• Centering Digital Equity in Workforce Development, from the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (WDC). This robust evaluation reviewed a $1 million publicly and privately funded digital navigator program serving 2,400 people. Data was collected via surveys, focus groups, and interviews in more than a half-dozen different languages.
• Statewide Assessment of Hawaii’s Digital Economy, from the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism’s Hawaii Broadband & Digital Equity Office (HBDEO). This study surveyed a broad sample of 1,000 Hawaii companies (including both for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations) about their participation in various digital economy activities.
• Conexus Indiana’s AI in Indiana and Industry 4.0 Technology Adoption Survey. The former document analyzed data about the use of artificial intelligence by Indiana employers, while the latter is based on a survey of advanced manufacturers in Indiana about a variety of types of technology usage.

Illustrating the pent-up demand for digital skills

The Seattle WDC report used a few vivid metrics to illustrate the demand for digital skills among several thousand mostly low-income residents, including many multilingual individuals. The pre-survey administered to program participants showed:

• At intake, just 7% of people reported that they were “not at all comfortable” using a smartphone, but fully 27% weren’t comfortable using a [desktop or laptop] computer, and 40% weren’t comfortable searching for or applying for jobs online.
• The single most popular reason for why people wanted to learn to use technology was to “get more education” (78%). And 63% said they wanted to “get a job or a better job.”

These simple findings upend the assumption that just because people own smartphones, they must also be adept using other common types of technology. Similarly, the findings illuminate the strong demand for learning and economic mobility among adults with low digital skills.

The report also affirms earlier research that having a working computer at home is correlated with people being more comfortable performing technology-related tasks. While this may seem like common sense, collecting this data helps advocates to illustrate how the different elements of digital inclusion (internet access, devices, and skills) reinforce each other.

Highlighting how employers see new technology as connected to worker upskilling

The Indiana survey of advanced manufacturers found that in general, businesses report that adopting Industry 4.0 technologies such as cobots (collaborative robots), sensor technology, and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is leading to worker upskilling rather than layoffs.

• Specifically, 61% of businesses said the adoption of new technologies will minimize repetitive human tasks.
• 52% said technology adoption will upskill their workforce.

By contrast, just 12% said technology adoption would reduce payroll and eliminate positions.

When asked about their motivations for implementing new technologies, the top answer (from 86% percent of employers) was to increase efficiency and lower costs. But notably, 52% of employers said that “shifting the workforce to higher-value functions/tasks” was a motivation.

Digging into which artificial intelligence technologies are being adopted

The Indiana AI survey is useful in highlighting exactly what kinds of artificial intelligence technologies manufacturers are adopting. The report notes:

Of survey respondents that have adopted AI in at least one or more business units, most have implemented computer vision systems or physical robotics These are AI capabilities that directly and immediately impact a manufacturers’ shopfloor production efficiency and productivity.

This kind of data shows how advocates can go beyond the AI hype to gather specific data on what AI adoption looks like among local businesses, and what that might mean for workers and learners.

Describing business participation in the digital economy

Hawaii’s digital economy survey has fascinating insights for advocates trying to understand how businesses are using technology, and the implications for workers and economic development. The Hawaii data illustrates how local economic revenue can be impacted when internet services go down, and how many businesses employ workers who work remotely from other states.

Hawaii used definitions from the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis to inquire about several areas of digital economy activity:

• Digital services such as cloud services, cybersecurity, and digital content creation.
• E-commerce via business-to-business sales (B2B) and/or business-to-consumer sales (B2C).
• Infrastructure products or servicing, such as computer equipment manufacturing, software publishing, and custom computer programming services

Overall, the survey found that half (51%) of private businesses surveyed engaged in digital activities to generate revenue. Notably, 11% of businesses had employees who work remotely from outside Hawaii, and a startling 67% of businesses experienced interruptions of internet accessibility, with average internet downtime of nearly 9.8 hours per month, or more than a full day.

Understanding business and worker concerns about cybersecurity and scams

A notable finding from both the Indiana employer survey and the Seattle individual survey is that people are deeply concerned about scams, fraud, and cybersecurity attacks.

For businesses, cybersecurity was far and away the top risk that manufacturers voiced about the adoption of AI technologies. For individuals, being afraid of scams and identity theft was the number two reason given for not using technology.

Advocates can use these findings to dig deeper into the real-life experiences that may lie behind these concerns and identify areas for future advocacy and policy change.