Category: The Labour Market

Evaluation of the Local Digital Skills Partnerships 
28/12/2022 

Background

Digital skills are important for enjoying full civic involvement, and they are becoming reliable indicators of successful labour market participation and career progression. Those that suffer from the widening digital divide are more likely to experience poor economic and social outcomes, including fewer job opportunities. At a government level, several initiatives have been launched with the aim of addressing the challenges of the digital skills gap and its effects on the labour market. This research brief offers an evaluation of one such initiative; the Local Digital Skills Partnerships (LDSP).

The Local Digital Skills Partnerships

The LDSP programme is supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, and covers 6 areas across England: West Midlands, Heart of South West, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Cheshire and Warrington, West Yorkshire, and the South East. The purpose of Local DSPs is to enhance regional capacity to improve digital skills. These six partnerships were formed during 2018 and 2019 (Amion, 2021) and the activities of these programmes, which largely reflect the specific needs of each region, include supporting digital skills learning at the individual level, supporting digital inclusion, and increasing sector-specific appreciation of the importance of digital skills and inclusion. Although increasing labour market participation is not the main goal of LDSP, it forms a distinctive part of this policy initiative.

LDSP, in seeking to equip the workforce with digital skills, is broadly grounded in the UK Digital Strategy (Amion, 2021, p. 6), which was published in 2017. The Digital Strategy forms a background for LDSP by establishing “a new Digital Skills Partnership, working together with partners who are passionate about making a difference and who share our ambitions to tackle the digital skills gap” (DCMS, 2017). Another important policy background for LDSP is the Government’s “Levelling Up” Agenda (Amion, 2021, p. 20), in the way that local contexts are empowered to meet particular demands, thus contributing to the government’s agenda of creating a post-pandemic resilient economy.

Launched between 2018-19 (Amion, 2021, p. 11), the first six local digital skills partnerships were established to improve both basic and specialist digital skills levels in light of a growing digital skills mismatch by connecting a diverse range of partners from “public, private, and third sectors to upskill the current workforce”, regionally raise awareness of digital skills, and to combat the digital divide.

In terms of the general timeline, Lancashire and the Heart of the South West DSPs were established in April 2018 and June 2018 respectively; West Midlands in December 2018; Cheshire and Warrington and Cornwall Isles of Scilly both in May 2019; South East in June 2019; and, West Yorkshire in October 2020.

Although each Local DSP is given flexibility so as to respond to challenges within its specific context, a standard model is generally shared by the DSPs that includes several key features (Amion, 2021): 1) A steering group to provide vision and strategic direction, with a sufficient expertise across different sectors. 2) A Regional Coordinator, typically with a background in private sector contexts, whose responsibility it is to provide sufficient capacity for delivering the outcomes and to sustain the growth of the partnership. 3) The embeddedness of the Local DSP within governance structures and protocols. 4) The implementation of best practice among Regional Coordinators and within partnerships through DCMS-facilitated networks.

While activities in these regions vary depending on needs and priorities, they typically include involving young people in digital skills opportunities, supporting individual digital skills development and workforce development, increasing private sector appreciation of digital skills, and enhancing digital inclusion. For example, West Yorkshire delivered digital marketing training for BAME-led and women-led businesses, the South East focussed on digitising businesses as part of the Covid Recovery Fund, and Cheshire and Warrington created a digital skills development plan (Amion, 2021, p. 30 ; Written Evidence/LOL0126, 2021, p. 4).

The Lancashire DSP worked closely with Lancashire Adult Learning to upskill 14,500 learners, through 2,000 courses in over 300 venues (Amion, 2021, p. 66). Lancashire re-designed some of its curriculum by using the findings from the Local DSPs research into regional digital skills levels. In seeking to increase digital inclusion, the Lancashire DSP and Adult Learning worked with 130 partner organisations in delivering an event for those with significant digital skills needs.

The first six DSPs received £75,000/year to employ a fulltime Regional Coordinator. Through this person, the DSPs gained access to contacts in the private sector, “wider DCMS policy areas and other government departments” (Amion, 2021, p. ii), with the DCMS providing further expertise and support. In terms of the overall programme costs, the initial financial investment in the first six Local DSPs landed at around £1.3 million, which included three years funding for Regional Coordinators.

Can LDSP be considered successful?

The notion of “success” in public policy can take multiple forms, and so we need to decide on what we mean by this ambiguous term if we are to evaluate whether LDSP is successful (McConnell, 2015). For the sake of simplicity, we will understand policy success in terms of “processes”, “programme”, and “impact”.

Process Success

Process success occurs when a policy initiative garners significant support, such that opposition is minimal or non-existent. There is, in other words, a strong coalition behind the initiation of it. Moreover, the policy is clearly formulated against achievable goals, with a clear course of action. From this perspective, it seems that the LDSP is clearly successful. LDSP is firmly embedded in the government’s policy landscape and has received significant support, especially the UK Digital Strategy 2017. Indeed, it was this “strategy that established the National DSP” (Amion, 2021, p. 7); i.e. the national steering group for the local partnerships. A further significant policy context against which to understand the LDSP programme is “Build Back Better” (Amion, 2021, p. 6), which has emphasised the importance of digital connectivity and upskilling for nurturing a post-pandemic economy. The LDSP has also been endorsed by Ministers, including the Minister of State for Digital, Matt Hancock, who launched the DSP at Google Academy in 2017. LDSP has, furthermore, been construed as a natural partner to other regional strategic priorities. In a study of the digital landscape of Lancashire (the first DCMS-funded DSP) (Lancashire Skills Hub, 2019), the LDSP is mentioned alongside other important strategies, including the “Lancashire Strategic Economic Plan”, “Skills and Employment Framework”, “Digital Lancashire”, and the “Lancashire County Council Digital First Strategy 2019-2024”.

The support for this programme is also demonstrated by the perceived “Attractiveness of the Local DSP model” (Amion, 2021, p. 23), as many applicants recognised the increasing importance of digital upskilling for local economies. This includes the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Temple, 2020), which explicitly recognised that a “partnership approach was required to drive up digital skills”.

However, unaffiliated partnerships have also acknowledged the value of the LDSP initiative. This includes the region of Humber which, while it had established a digital skills partnership independently of DCMS, nevertheless recognised the immense value of a dedicated Regional Coordinator. Likewise, an independent initiative in the North East suggested that becoming an official LDSP may enable significant access to not only important networks, but also “pots of funding to deliver digital skills activity” (Amion, 2021, p. 24).

Programme success

Here we will evaluate the programme success of the Local Digital Skills Partnerships. That is, to what extent has it successfully realised the outcomes for specific target groups?

Local DSPs have documented benefits in annual and monthly reports to DCMS and local stakeholders, focussing especially on activities and delivery. In order to evaluate the LDSP, we need to differentiate between short-term and long-term objectives. In terms of short-term deliverables, many local initiatives have successfully provided basic and specialist digital skills training programmes for under-represented groups in the workforce. The Heart of South West delivered a 12-month Digital Momentum programme to support 194 women and individuals from mostly deprived areas to transition into the digital sector by gaining skills in cybersecurity, software programming, and other skills particular to digital businesses (Amion, 2021, p. 62; Collyer, 2020). The Lancashire DSP delivered digital skills training through the mentioned Adult Learning initiative, reaching approximately 14,500 learners at over 300 venues. The regional coordinator played a central part in this, by facilitating and nurturing relationships with key stakeholders. Research conducted by the DSP also provided information to redesign the curriculum and teaching delivery of Lancashire Adult Learning.

In terms of long-term accomplishments, we should consider youth-focussed initiatives as well as awareness-raising ambitions. As mentioned earlier, DSPs such as Cheshire and Warrington delivered digital skills training to 1,000 young people, as part of a summer school. Likewise, Lancashire engaged over 800 young people through the Teen Tech Live digital festival. While such initiatives do not produce immediate positive effects in terms of increased labour market participation, they may, in the long-term, mitigate a potential skills mismatch and, thus, enable future workforce participants to navigate a changing job market more easily. Several DSPs, furthermore, successfully raised awareness of the importance of digital skills within the business sector. For example, the South East DSP and Lancashire DSP worked closely with the non-profit organisation Tech Talent to raise awareness of digital skills provision and help businesses profit from it (Amion, 2021, p. 63). The West Midland DSP established a specific board, which included members from predominantly the private sector, smaller tech companies, and multi-national corporate businesses. The board members were “senior, credible figures within the industry, with an ability to influence other sector peers and investment” (Amion, 2021, p. 65).

While the LDSP has, on paper, seemingly delivered significant benefits by enabling a variety of upskilling initiatives and fostering awareness, it raises significant attribution problems, especially due to the ways in which different DSPs have been folded into existing policy initiatives. That is, while its strong political backing and congruency with other policy programs – both national and local – make it possible to view LDSP as a process success, this renders it difficult to pinpoint the exact contributions of the DSPs. An interviewee of the Lancashire Adult Learning initiative alludes to this when they say (Amion, 2021, p. 66): “We could have done some of it without the Local DSP, but the impact wouldn’t have been as great…”. Hence, it is difficult to specify the added value of the local DSP in this case, which raises an attribution problem.

Given that some regions already prioritised the challenges of digital exclusion and its negative effects for the labour market, it is difficult to differentiate the effects and impact of DSPs from established policy programmes and networks. This is evident when we turn to West Midlands, which had obtained a “Skills Devolution Deal” with the government in 2018, including £5m of funding for launching a digital skills pilot initiative. Hence, this area was already committed to and had implemented an infrastructure for facilitating workforce upskilling.

Having said this, it is evident from external reports (Amion, 2021) and region-specific impact reports (Lancashire City Council, 2021; Heart of the South West LEP, 2021; Digital Skills Partnership: Heart of the South West, 2019; Written Evidence/LOL0126, 2021; Temple, 2020) that LDSP is an important partner and is adding value when it comes to digital re-training and upskilling – thus mitigating the mismatch between workers and industry needs.

Political Success

To what extent has the LDSP aided in promoting the government’s agenda and can we identify any new policy initiatives based on the achievements of the LDSP?

LDSP seems to enjoy continuous support by the government and may be considered unambiguously successful. The newly released UK Digital Strategy (DCMS, 2022) vows to “support local digital projects by providing access to digital skills training…”. In this context, the Local Digital Skills Partnerships is mentioned as a successful “Case study”, in the way that it brought together employers, academia, and training providers to develop digital skills programmes suited to regional contexts. Moreover, the LDSP programme is mentioned in the government’s Levelling Up white paper (HM Government, 2022, p. 185), in which it is stated that the UK government will continue to “work with local leaders to develop Local Digital Skills Partnerships”, and that the “insights and evaluation of the programme [will] help to build digital skills capability across the UK”. However, it remains to be seen “how the costs of the Regional Coordinator role should be met” (Amion, 2021, p. 47), and whether the continuous support of the government will translate into further funding.

Policy Recommendations

The successfulness of initiatives such as the LDSP depends strongly on the abilities and resources of local delivery partners.

In addition to creating effective partnerships with the business sector, LDSP works closely with voluntary and public sector entities. Yet, while many partners rely on local funding, government funding for local authorities has decreased significantly in recent years. Between 2010 and 2017 such funding halved (Lewer and Bibby, 2021). The Local Government Association reported in 2020 a rise “in the number of short-term, ringfenced, small grants”, that were often fragmented and reactive. Alarmingly, more “than a third were discontinued from one year to the next”, which renders long-term strategic planning very difficult.

Such financial uncertainty is making the work of various DSPs increasingly difficult and will hamper the possibility of upskilling the workforce. A successful case study of LDSP was the partnership with Lancashire Adult Learning. However, such success stories could become rarer should the government’s spending on adult education continue to decrease (Adams, 2022). Without sufficient spending stability (as remarked in the previous chapter), the prospects of digital upskilling will be undermined, and the ambitions of the LDSP and similar programmes may remain partly unrealised.

References

Adams, R. (2022). Adult education and apprenticeships budget will be 25% down since 2010 [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jun/13/adult-education-and-apprenticeships-budget-will-have-shrunk-25-in-15-years-says-ifs [Accessed 20 June 2022].

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