Understand digital capability and the digital workforce
Information about digital capability, the public service digital workforce and the challenges that are being faced.
Building a capable digital workforce
Globally, technology is advancing at an extremely rapid rate and workforce skills, knowledge and behaviours must adapt to stay relevant. Change is a constant and the workforce must continue to learn, adapt and anticipate change.
A digitally capable public service workforce enables the public service to effectively and efficiently serve New Zealand.
Working in the public service increasingly means understanding new and emerging technologies, systems and processes. It also means working differently, using new mindsets and skills.
The public service digital workforce
The public service digital workforce includes:
This information and guidance focuses on the last 2 groups — digital technology specialists and digital leaders. These 2 groups will be referred to as the ‘digital workforce’.
However, our wider workforce must also know how to use digital technology tools safely and well. This is particularly true for use of emerging technology like AI.
Responsible AI guidance for the public service: GenAI
Skills, capabilities and GenAI
People who use digital technology in their jobs day-to-day
This is a broad group which includes the entire public service workforce. For example, people using digital tools like Microsoft Office suite or AI tools to help them with their daily tasks and responsibilities.
Digital technology specialists
Specialists include roles such as:
- Systems analyst
- ICT security specialist
- Enterprise Architect
- ICT Business Analyst
- Developer or Programmer
- ICT Project Manager
- UX (User Experience) or UI (User Interface) Designer.
Digital leaders
Digital leaders are senior leaders and decision makers who lead the delivery of digital services and steer an agency’s digital strategic direction. They understand their changing environment and manage the agency’s use of digital assets and emerging technologies, including business transformation and delivering digital services to New Zealanders.
The meaning of ‘digitally capable’
There are some key differences in what digital capability looks like across different groups.
Individuals
Digitally capable individuals use their skills (digital, soft and other skills), knowledge, behaviours and experiences to achieve their work goals. They leverage digital technologies and processes to achieve goals and objectives. They learn and adapt to changes in the workplace and industry trends to ensure their digital skills and knowledge are relevant.
- Digital technology specialists like UX and UI designers who use feedback from key stakeholders to develop, test and refine user experience for both web and mobile applications to support user-friendly design.
- People who use digital technology in their day-to-day work like the Microsoft Office suite or AI tools.
Detailed description of the image
Professional skills, general workplace skills and behaviours are the skill components of capability.
Technical knowledge, tools and methodologies, and content are the knowledge components of capability.
The components are connected by experience and supported by qualifications and certifications.
Image source: Data, Digital and Cyber Workforce Plan 2025-30 (pg. 17) — Australian Public Service
Leaders
Leadership is key in any transformation and strong digital leadership is needed to drive public sector collaboration and cultural change. Leaders are future focused.
Capable digital leaders role model, enable and encourage behaviours in their teams that demonstrate openness, partnership and cross-agency collaboration. They proactively build a culture of continuous learning that encourages evidence and data-driven decision-making. They support their teams to build digital capability.
Public service agency workforce
Digitally capable agencies attract, recruit and retain people with the behavioural and technical skillsets and experience needed to achieve their goals over the short, medium and long term.
These agencies foster a continuous learning environment to adapt and deliver in a changing environment. Their diverse workforce consists of digitally capable leaders, digital technology specialists and a wider ‘digitally literate’ workforce.
The government wants to see a culture that is based on continuous improvement and enhancing productivity to deliver better services to New Zealanders and government priorities. This includes the expectation that agencies work together to take a future-focused approach to building capability in the public sector.
Government Workforce Policy Statement 2024 — Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission (PDF 109KB)
Public service workforce
A digitally capable public service workforce is one that delivers effective public services to New Zealanders. The Strategy for a Digital Public Service (2019) talks about ‘new ways of working’:
- working together across agencies
- being flexible and mobile
- delivering better services for New Zealanders.
It’s expected that there will be:
- a more mobile public service digital workforce
- strategic collaboration, and digital skills shortages will be identified and addressed
- cross-agency collaboration on digital skills and knowledge pipelines.
Growing global demand for digital labour
Demand for digital labour continues to grow. The World Economic Forum notes that the global cybersecurity industry talent shortage could reach 85 million workers by , causing approximately USD$8.5 trillion in unrealised annual revenue.
Cybersecurity’s global talent shortage report — World Economic Forum
Underutilisation in the wider New Zealand workforce
Underutilisation is a technical term used by Stats NZ to describe people who are untapped in the New Zealand labour market and is an important concept given predicted increasing demand for digital labour.
Underutilisation rate — Stats NZ
For the quarter underutilisation was 12.3% or 390,000 people.
The Government Workforce Policy Statement includes the expectation that the public sector will have a workforce that is responsive to the needs of all New Zealanders. It also includes, that it ‘build a diverse and inclusive workforce that can develop policies and deliver services that are effective and responsive to all who need and use them’.
Government Workforce Policy Statement 2024 — Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission (PDF 109KB)
Research shows there are groups underrepresented in digital specialist roles. In its research report on the tech sector, Toi Mai | Workforce Development Council noted that women, Māori, Pacific peoples and tāngata whaikaha | disabled people are underrepresented and face barriers to entry into the technology sector.
Te Wao Toi Whanui — Toi Mai | Workforce Development Council (PDF 31MB)
Digital roles tend to underutilise certain groups. Of the 98,583 workers in IT roles across all sectors in New Zealand in 2019, 27% were female, 4% were Māori and 2.8% were Pacific peoples.
Digital Skills For Our Digital Future Report 2021 — NZTech (PDF 6.8MB)
For the March 92,500 Māori (19.7%) were classified as underutilised in the New Zealand workforce. Māori skills and talents are more likely than non-Māori to be underutilised in the labour market.
The public service must attract people from the widest possible pool of talent. By better utilising the talents and skills of Māori and other underutilised groups in digital specialist occupations, the public service will benefit from diversity, increase staff retention and improve productivity. Māori and other underutilised groups will also benefit from entering these occupations.
Addressing supply and demand challenges
Globally, demand for people with advanced digital skills continues to grow, with governments and industry keenly aware of the need to fill the skills gaps.
Aotearoa New Zealand faces 3 specific challenges — a struggle to fill advanced digital roles that require experience and specific skill, challenges placing early-career tech workers into industry roles and inspiring more rangatahi to consider tech.
The 2024 research by Toi Mai pointed to factors affecting the tech sector workforce, including the following.
Immigration
Dependence on a foreign workforce creates a system susceptible to external disruptions. Changes in global immigration policies, economic downturns in key source countries, and COVID-19 have been proven to negatively disrupt the flow of talent. This hinders the ability of the New Zealand digital workforce to adapt and stay resilient.
Supply and demand
There is a growing gap between the sector’s demand for talent and domestic talent supply and industry growth. Toi Mai notes that investment and training has not kept up with industry growth and needs.
Te Wao Toi Whānui — Toi Mai | Workforce Development Council (PDF 34MB)
What we know about the digital capability of the public service workforce
In the short to medium term, it’s expected that agencies will do more strategic workforce planning and increasingly use skills frameworks and integrate them into the employee lifecycle, including the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).
This is one of the ways we will see an engaged, skilled, future-ready and sustainable public service digital workforce, that delivers effectively and efficiently to New Zealanders.
There is no common cross-agency approach yet for assessing the digital capability of our workforce and forecasting skills of digital workforce requirements across agencies.
Each agency makes its own decisions on its own digital workforce. This information and guidance sets expectations about building a capable digital workforce, as well as providing useful information on where and how to start.
Some of the surveys and data being used to understand capability and how it’s changing follow.
The Kiwis Count survey
The survey provides insight into New Zealanders’ satisfaction and trust of public services.
For the quarter, 82% of respondents reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their most recent government service experience, the same as the quarter, and the highest since .
People who used exclusively digital channels for their most recent service had higher levels of satisfaction (86%) than those who used non-digital (79%) or mixed channel services (81%).
Kiwis Count — Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission
Te Taunaki Public Service Census
A survey of public servants working in departments and departmental agencies about the capability and culture of the public service. Results for the Census are yet to be published (expected ).
The survey included questions about workload, work-life balance, access to evidence and access to appropriate tools, like technology and information. It included the questions, ‘my organisation takes advantage of technology to deliver better services/information to the public’ and ‘how often do you use AI for work’.
Te Taunaki Public Service Census — Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission
The public service digital workforce capability survey
A new survey of public service agencies about the capability of the public service digital workforce.
The survey asks agencies questions about their current capability and how they develop capability. Agencies are encouraged to adopt SFIA and the survey asks questions about the uptake of the SFIA framework.
Insights from the public service digital workforce capability survey
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