Watch:
This report is Canada’ s first national digital talent strategy aiming to shed light on country’ s digital opportunities and challenges. Digital talent is faced as one of the most crucial advantages within the framework of a global economy. This report was written by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC).
The expansion of the ICT sector is gradually leading to an interconnected economy, revealing the new technology growth drivers that will play a key role within the next few years. These include the Internet of Things (IoT); social, mobile, applications, analytics and cloud (SMAAC) technologies; automation; and additive manufacturing.
As it is stated in the report:
The ICT labour situation highlights the importance of engaging all available talent within and beyond our borders, including women, youth, immigrants, Indigenous persons and persons with disabilities. Doing so will help mitigate the impact of the talent shortage and increase business’ innovation and competitiveness.
The ability to exploit and capture possible benefits arising of the emerging digital trends is considered to be one of the main goals of the Digital Talent strategy. In order to expand the opportunities offered by the continuously growing digital transformation of the economy, attention should be given to the rise of digital skills of Canada’ s workforce. Thus, this strategy contains practical recommendations aimed at building Canada’ s digital talent base for today and the future.
The proposed recommendations include tactics such as nurturing a strong youth talent pipeline, leveraging Canada’ s diverse talent, supporting work force upskilling to enhance digital adoption, attracting and retaining global digital talent, strengthening digital literacy and digital skills for Canadians, fostering digital entrepreneurship, and building labour mobility pathways to fill high demand occupations.
Given the trends, challenges and opportunities Canada is experiencing in digital adoption, education and skills, and talent supply, paired with an uncertain global economic outlook, it is important to find pathways for strengthening Canada’ s potential around digital technology and talent ‘” two essential ingredients for innovation and global competitiveness.
Read the full report here.