Society and the economy are currently going through a period of transformation in which certain skills have become essential for workers to fit into the productive system, and for companies to remain competitive. From a labour market perspective, "digital literacy" is now as relevant as language literacy and numeracy development: all necessary for decent employment and to take advantage of the opportunities that the increasingly digital economy and society offers in terms of personal development and integration.

Digital skills are those that enable people to use technology for a variety of purposes such as working, learning, shopping, information, entertainment and participation in society. Basically, they are linked to almost all aspects of work and life, and enable individuals to improve their employability, productivity, creativity and resilience to respond to the successive technological changes of the future. In fact, the digital skills required today are different from those required 5 years ago, which highlights the need to develop basic digital skills but also skills for continuous updating in lifelong learning.

In practice, the digital skills we are referring to are indivisible and interlinked, but for the purposes of generating broad definitions that allow discussion in the field of public policy, it is possible to distinguish three levels, according to the classification made by the International Telecommunications Union:

Basic level: this is made up of those foundational skills that allow basic tasks such as using a keyboard or touch screen, operating software such as word processors, managing files, sending e-mails, filling in forms and searching the web.

Intermediate level: Intermediate skills allow us to use digital technologies more effectively to create content, work in more automated processes or evaluate technology. While these skills are generic, they enable individuals to cover a wide range of tasks necessary to exercise citizenship and develop in the workplace. The great characteristic of this level is that the skills required are continually expanding, so that new competences are permeating the intermediate level such as the ability to analyse, produce, interpret and visualise large amounts of data. In turn, some of these competences are qualitatively different and fall within those increasingly required for employability (see next note: "Competences for the digital economy").

Advanced level: generally encompasses the skills needed for jobs in the IT sector or strongly linked to it, such as graphic design, multimedia development, data analysis, etc. The global demand for such workers is expected to accelerate further in the coming years, due to the imminence of phenomena such as artificial intelligence, big data, coding and the internet of things. These skills are typically acquired through advanced formal education, although there are other viable training options such as coding boot camps. In this field, Vocational Training Institutions (VTIs) in the region have been systematically increasing their offer, although more strongly in continuing education than in degree programmes.

From the perspective of vocational training, there are two key challenges: on the one hand, to develop a training offer that addresses the development of digital skills at all levels of qualification, since the future trend is that all occupations will progressively require these skills. Secondly, the very digital evolution of VET requires a process of continuous training of its management, administrative and teaching staff.

Sources for this note:

• IDB. 2019. "21st Century Skills: Developing Cross-Cutting Skills in Latin America and the Caribbean".
• ITU. 2018. "Digital Skills Toolkit".