Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released the research study Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches, published by strategy and economics consulting firm AlphaBeta. The report found Australia needs an additional 6.5 million newly skilled and reskilled digital workers by 2025 – 79% more than we have today. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Digital Skills Survey 2020 by NZTech revealed that Aotearoa requires an additional 4,822 digitally skilled employees by 2022, an increase of more than 41%, based on 2017 forecasts.
Consequently, AWS have launched AWS Skill Builder, a digital learning experience available in more than 200 countries and territories, which provides free skills training to millions of people around the world. Anyone with an internet connection and a desire to learn can quickly and easily access over 500 free on-demand courses—including nearly 60 new cloud computing classes added in the past year. AWS Skill Builder is designed to meet different learning goals and styles with some content offered up to 16 languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
CREATING A CULTURE OF LIFELONG DIGITAL LEARNING
The AlphaBeta report found there are four types of workers who will need to acquire digital skills by 2025; digital workers, non-digital workers, today’s students, and disenfranchised individuals (those who are unemployed or involuntarily excluded from the labour force).
Upskilling does not need to take months – it can be done in days and weeks through micro-credentials, small certification-style subject focused study. There is incredible untapped potential, particularly within the non-tech workforce to harness their existing skills and experience to advance in our communities and society at large.
LOCAL SOLUTIONS TO LOCAL ISSUES
Solving the digital skills challenge should start at the grass-roots. Our AWS re/Start program prepares underemployed and unemployed individuals for careers in cloud computing through classroom-based training. This free, full-time, 12-week program is taught through local training providers such as Australian Indigenous training company Goanna Solutions and New Zealand’s largest tertiary education provider, Te Pūkenga. In the past 12 months, AWS re/Start has expanded across Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and New Zealand.
AWS re/Start has connected more than 90 %of graduates with job interview opportunities and helped Joe Howe get back into the employment market after he took a five-year break to be a full-time parent. Through AWS re/Start, Joe received the latest training on cloud computing, helping him land a job at Itoc, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner that works with customers on Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, within a week of graduation.
Sazia Khan, another AWS re/Start graduate, retrained herself as a cybersecurity professional after COVID-19 lockdowns put a pause on her 10-year career in hospitality. Khan said she had an interest in IT that stretched back to when she was growing up. Now she is now reskilled in tech and cybersecurity and working as a senior security analyst at global IT services and consulting company, Accenture. New Zealand re/Start graduate Jocelynn Bourne completed a computer science degree after leaving high school, but found the prospect of getting a job in the industry daunting. The AWS re/Start program gave her a great overview of the cloud computing industry, and face-to-face networking opportunities.
