The unique selling point of the Online Centres Network is the localised approach for digital skills learning that only they can provide. Being the CEO of Good Things Foundation for the past six and a half years, I know this area well, so I was delighted to be asked to chair the local arm of DCMS’ Digital Skills Partnership (DSP) as part of my role on the DSP Board, along with MB Christie from Tech Nation. I hope you caught up with my and MB’s blog when we announced this in February – it’s worth a look if you’ve not read it.

Just before Easter we hosted a ‘Creative Summit’ in Sheffield, bringing together people from tech companies, Local Authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), the Online Centres Network, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Department for Education (DfE), and others, to talk about localised approaches to digital skills learning. This is a bigger agenda than ‘just’ digital inclusion as it includes all levels of digital skills for everyone at all ages, including businesses and charities, and recruiting talent. Because digital skills are essential for economic strength and social inclusion.

And we have a big ambition – we want there to be Local Digital Skills Partnerships all over the country. It’s a very big tent as everyone has different experience and a different area of expertise to contribute. When we all have a shared goal it makes sense for us to join forces, rather than work against each other.

At our Creative Summit we kicked off the co-production of a Local Digital Skills ‘Playbook’ – part guide/framework and part inspirational examples. Or it will be! The Playbook is currently in draft form and will be launched, in draft, on our Local Digital Skills Partnership (LDSP) Medium publication very soon. And we’ll be asking everyone who’s interested to take part in refining and adding to the final version. Adopting this joined up approach to creating an important product like this is exactly what we need to make sure it’s relevant, effective, and can become a real tool for success. Watch this blog as I’ll let you know as soon as the public draft is launched.

I was pleased that we had representatives from Local Enterprise Partnerships at the event. LEPs are a collective of local authorities and businesses from an area. In England there are 38 LEPs and the impact and influence they have means they can make a real difference on the subjects that really matter.

For this project they can play an important part, representing the views in their respective regions and, following the publication of the first ‘Playbook’, bringing it forward and using it as a tool to make digital skills happen for people and businesses in their areas.

image1
Me and MB at the Creative Summit

The Creative Summit was a great session and I’d like to once again thank everyone who attended. The next one will be held in the Summer and I’m sure by then that the Playbook will have evolved and developed into a truly useful and exciting tool. If you’d like to be on the invite list do let me know.

I can’t wait to see where this takes us.

Original source – Helen Milner

Comments closed