With London Tech Week in full swing, Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates & Global Tech Advocates, gives us the inside scoop on the industry with his daily diary
Events at Olympia drew to a close yesterday, but London Tech Week is still buzzing with a multitude of fringe events taking place across the capital.
The breadth of talent on show has, as ever, been a notable draw to this week’s proceedings.
Talent and ingenuity are what have driven many of the most serious digital advances since the turn of the century. However, it is no longer enough for just those at the very top of tech to be equipped with the skills to navigate this new digital age.
In April, the government reported that the digital skills gap is estimated to cost the UK economy £63bn per year. This gap is unsustainable. 6.8m people, 13 per cent of the UK population, have “ultra low” digital skills and are unable to do the most basic of digital tasks. These figures represent a real problem, coming at a huge economic cost and risk costing the UK much more in the future.
If tech is to continue driving progress, and the power of tools such as AI are to be properly deployed, the importance of equipping the working population with digital skills is imperative.
Tech skills take centre stage
Throughout London Tech Week, many events have rightly focused on the importance of delivering digital skills and nurturing British talent in the sector. Workforce skills have been a consistent feature in virtually all the 25 plus events I have attended.
Attendees at Olympia yesterday heard from Personio Co-founder and CEO, Hanno Renner and Royal
Academy of Engineering CEO Hayaatun Sillem CBE, about the importance of empowering and upskilling people to deliver the change so desperately needed by businesses .
Despite conversations about AI occasionally driving somewhat apocalyptic predictions about mass-
unemployment, the generally accepted wisdom is that people will continue to play different – but indispensable – roles in the workforce for decades to come.
Just today I visited Level 39 for Tech West England’s event on the future of Smart Cities. This reminded me of the many new jobs that tech creates year-on-year. One of Tech London Advocates’ proudest achievements in recent years was successfully recommending to the Mayor of London to appoint the city’s first chief digital officer. Theo Blackwell MBE, London’s CDO, has really embraced the smart cities agenda underpinned by a Data Charter for London. Such a job, just over a decade ago, would have been almost inconceivable.
London Tech Week serves as a timely reminder of the UK’s tech capabilities, but in years to come it is crucial that the country continues to equip the wider population with digital skills.
The importance of digital literacy
Digital literacy in the 21st Century is an absolute imperative for any modern tech hub. Emerging tech such as AI rapidly increases the speed at which other advances are being realised, but the workforce must be equipped with the skills to keep up with these advances.
In this sense, the topic of a panel discussion yesterday on the ‘Guide to Working Harmoniously with
Generative AI’ caught my eye. A digitally literate workforce is crucial if we are to take full advantage
of the capabilities these futuristic tools have at their disposal.
Unfortunately, the UK is still lagging behind in digital skills. This reality risks hampering much of the
workforce from adapting to the skilled, tech-driven work of the future, and therefore further widening the digitals skills gap. The next UK government must work closely with the private sector to better support comprehensive digital skills training – without this, I worry that productivity levels will continue to lag and more talent risks dropping out of the workforce.
The UK, as the third largest tech ecosystem in the world, should not be lagging in skills. I believe it represents a significant missed opportunity. The gap in skills is a massive concern for the future of London’s tech standing on the international stage – cooperation between stakeholders must seek to shift that reality.
All eyes on the next generation
The UK’s future as a tech hub is dependent on the effective proliferation of digital skills across the country’s workforce.
A key to ensuring that London and the UK is adequately skilled for the future, with AI as a focal
point, is focusing on our young people. The new generation needs to be made aware of the potential
value of digital courses. They need to be nurtured and inspired.
Equally, reskilling and upskilling the current workforce remains vital. Tech change is affecting the
workforce of today – workers of all backgrounds and skill sets need to be able to react and thrive in
the ever-developing tech-based job environment.
Eliminating the digital skills gap should be a staunch focus in unlocking the UK’s potential to continue
as a world-leading tech hub. This should underpin the confidence international firms like OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce have given London to base AI hubs in the city.
Many organisations do fantastic work, leading the way on driving the skills agenda, including Digital Boost, hundo, Future Dot Now and Upskill Universe. The Tech London Advocates Education group has a digital skills platform to showcase the many organisations which offer digital skills training.
If there are three words of action to sustain London’s international tech standing they would be; empower, inspire and invest in our next generation in digital upskilling.