The problem with digital skills

I say ‘problem’, of course I mean problems. Lots of them. (And not just in the cultural sector either.) So it’s interesting that last week saw the launch of number of initiatives that might just help improve digital skills and literacy within the UK cultural sector. (In case you missed it, the UK Museums Computer Group did a handy round up.)

It’s reassuring to see some practical (funded) responses to some of the issues that Daf James and I uncovered in our research on Structuring for Digital Success back in 2018. That research saw us survey around 60 organisations across the globe to find out how they structure and resource their digital activity. It revealed a number of challenges, many of which are linked to digital skills and — more specifically — a lack of them.

Skills we value vs. skills we have

We asked our respondents which digital skills they believed to be most valuable. These were:

• Technical leadership — the skill of guiding the organisation to make sensible decisions around the implementation of digital technologies and developing a stable, scalable digital infrastructure.
• Content management and editorial — this set of skills reflects the content focus of most of the digital teams we surveyed and points to digital teams having editorial ownership and managing content delivery to the platforms they support.
• Data management and analysis — these skills enable the digital team to understand user behaviour, which can steer the design and development of digital experiences, and inform decision-making around priorities for digital investment.

We also asked which of a range of digital skills were under-represented. Those that came out top were data management/analysis (60%), web/app development (56%) and technical leadership (51%).

So why are the skills that we value the most — namely tech leadership and data analysis — the same skills that are most lacking on digital teams?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that we don’t necessarily need to have all the digital skills in-house. Many cultural organisations (particularly smaller ones) will outsource web development. Those with web development skills in-house believe this is a more efficient way of operating — as long as you’ve got the sustained digital budgets to continue to afford an in-house team. (It’s worth reading this post from Aaron Cope who asks, ‘are museums better served by outside providers than in-house digital teams?’) So, the question of what digital skills we buy in and what skills we need in-house is often determined by the size and resources of the organisation. Worryingly, the majority of our respondents (72%) don’t believe that their budgets are large enough relative to their organisation’s ambition.

The other part of the answer to the apparent contradiction of digital skills we value versus those we most lack is down to remuneration…

It’s a money problem as much as a skills problem

Given that digital skills like tech leadership, web and app development and data analysis are in high demand across all sectors, not just ours, it’s no surprise that the relatively poor pay within the cultural sector is not tempting these people in. So if it’s hard to get new digitally skilled staff into our institutions, what about up-skilling existing staff? Unfortunately, it’s precisely the skills that are most in demand that are hardest to up-skill existing staff with (much as I love the thought of curators turned coders).

I also worry that digital skills programmes risk being a band aid to deeper, more systemic issues within our sector; pay and power gaps around gender, class and ethnicity, and concerns around the cultural sector’s dependency on unpaid labour.

But of course, it’s not an either/or. We need to be doing both — investing in our people, and tackling the more systemic issues that are holding our institutions back.

Digital literacy sometimes matters more than digital skills

Your executive board don’t need to know the ins and outs of setting up event tracking in Google Analytics. But they do need to work their way around a technical architecture diagram and they do need to understand what digital channels you’re using to what end. This requires a decent level of digital literacy.

So what is the difference between digital literacy and digital skills? Think of digital literacy as the ‘why, who and when’ and digital skills as the ‘what and the how’. A digital team (or person responsible for digital activity) will need a bit of both.

Nesta’s latest Digital Culture report (also released last week) revealed some depressing news: the proportion of all organisations that agree that their senior management are knowledgeable about digital technology has fallen from 22% in 2013 to 13% in 2019.

Improving the digital literacy of cultural leaders is clearly a vital step forward. And I welcome the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Leading the Sector professional development programme that targets leaders of medium-to-large heritage organisations. I really hope that the first cohort of leaders will get to spend time with some of the amazing digital leaders within our sector, who’ve been spending time at the coalface and can speak to the challenges and opportunities for digital.

One might also hope that, in the long-term, improved digital literacy of senior leaders will mean we’re better able to look at some of the systemic issues around pay within the sector (among other things).

Different problems everywhere

Sure there are cross-cutting skills that everyone needs (for example, production skills and analytic skills). But it’s really hard to tackle digital skills at anything more than at an individual level. It becomes all the more daunting at a sector-wide level. This is because the implications of skills investment are very different depending on what level and scale you are talking about.

At individual level it depends entirely on the responsibilities of your role and how broad or specialist it is. At group level it varies hugely — the digital skills needed by a collections management team (say in 3D modelling) is different to the skills a marketing team needs to manage its digital channel mix. And, as mentioned above, at senior leadership and exec level we’re talking more about digital literacy than digital skills.

But the problem for the sector (and one of the very best things about it) is it’s sheer variety. A small theatre company will have very different digital skills needs and objectives to a large heritage building. So how can one skills programme seek to address such a variety of challenges and such different levels of scale?

The findings of One by One (a national digital literacy building project led by The University of Leicester in partnership with Culture24) might show how. It argued that museum people (and indeed cultural sector people) need:

• Clear, consistent and widely recognised terms and definitions around digital skills and literacies, but not a single, set list;
• Responses that are both strategic and practical — helping them to set priorities and plan and track progress and proficiency;
• Support in recognising and then creating and enabling the conditions needed for organisational change to happen and thrive; and
• Guidance, tools and resources to support them in building their digital skills and literacy effectively.

Digital skills, but to what end?

Digital skills are often spoken about in the abstract, as inherently ‘a good thing’. But instead, shouldn’t we understand them as a means to an end? If so, to what end? What are they supposed to help us do? At individual level digital skills can support a individual’s growth and delivery within their role. But at group or organisation level we need to think of improved digital skills as a way to help service our missions.

Our research revealed that most of the organisations we surveyed hadn’t got a vision for digital success. And where they do exist, these visions are not necessarily well communicated and understood by the whole team, or indeed aligned with the mission of the organisation.

So without a clear definition of your digital vision and organisational alignment, how would you know what your skills investment should look like?

Most are not bothering to measure the impact of their skills investments…

The sector has already been busy with lots of different digital skills initiatives over the years. Projects that stand out for me are the MERL and Reading Museum’s Reading: Town & Country skills and engagement programme, the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Staff Training Programme and the skill-sharing elements involved in the development of the Wellcome Collection’s editorial strategy.

However, I’ve found it far harder to find examples of the impact digital skills investments have had (beyond an individual level). Can it really be that very few are actually measuring the impact that investing in digital skills has had? This is surely something that must be a priority for the skills support programme that the National Lottery Heritage Fund is offering.

The challenge will be that as a sector, we don’t appear to be very good at measuring impact. This is what Daf and I found in the second phase of our research, which suggested that 42% (of the 100+ organisations we surveyed) aren’t bothering to measure digital impact. The reasons? It’s mainly due to a lack of time and a lack of skills. We struggled with the idea of there being a lack of time — surely we just need to prioritise the effort needed to plan and measure the impact of our work? Nesta’s Digital Culture report also revealed that lack of in-house staff time was one of the most frequently cited barriers to organisations realising their digital aspirations (68%). To be successful any digital skills programme will need to address the entrenched view that there is a lack of time available to innovate or to measure the impact of our work.

… Because attribution is hard

But it’s not just a lack of time that means we struggle to understand the impact of digital skills investments. It’s also really hard to make the link between this sort of investment and any end result. Can we say that the MERL would not have had viral social media success without digital skills investments? There was undoubtedly a skills element (briefly mentioned in the Look at This Absolute Unit report): the then digital manager Adam Koszary and team are clearly hugely talented. But it’s hard to know what portion of this viral success is directly attributable to the skills investments of the Reading: Town & Country programme.

It’s not just about the hard skills

As the One by One programme pointed out, we should avoid having a single, set list of digital skills and literacies. But where on earth do we begin? Often hard digital skills are the easiest place to start — things like data analysis or product management — and even that’s a daunting prospect. Yet these hard skills are constantly evolving and so it’s hard to keep up (which makes the prospect all the more daunting).

I’d say the best digital people are ones with excellent soft skills too. Dr Lauren Vargas, researcher and digital strategist, has been doing some interesting thinking in this area and believes that emotional intelligence (EQ) is a fundamental part of the mix. I agree: hard skills will only get you so far, unless you’ve a good degree of self-awareness and self-knowledge, as well as strong relationship management and good empathy skills to steer and accelerate your digital activity. To that end, Lauren is working on a ‘periodic table’ of digital elements, including both the hard and soft skills needed to make digital happen. (I can’t wait to see it.)

Good EQ is something that is fundamental to what Paul Bowers describes as the cultural brokership involved in cross-silo thinking. Paul brilliantly summarises:

How can we enhance these skills and behaviours in our sector? First, I think we have to stop pretending that org change, authority deployment or processes can fix the silos. It’s been years, it’s failed, it’s across all industries and all sectors. Let’s focus on reality.

That’s why this current surge of investment in improving digital skills for our sector is such an important opportunity. One that we can’t mess up, because we simply can’t afford to fail. I really hope that a through a better understanding of some of the problems around digital skills, we might avoid some of the pitfalls of past attempts.