a) Maintaining momentum behind existing initiatives that target groups at risk of exclusion from benefits of the Digital Economy. ICT educators in the public system are very concerned about the reduction of funding from 2013 in the three large, eastern states. The reduction is apparently occurring in foundation digital literacy qualifications and skill sets from Certificate I and II in Information technology. This could place disadvantaged groups, in particular people from non-English speaking backgrounds and people with disabilities, who are at increased risk of exclusion the Digital Economy.
b) Best practice in training citizens, groups and small businesses and vastly improved methods. The following five principles for design of digital literacy/ICT skills training are based on the joint investigation for this report and the PostNBN Impact on Business Skills report:
i. Training for adoption of the NBN has to be less about the technology and more about what it can do
Overwhelming feedback was received that ICT ‘training’ was more about education than action.
Equally, those with lower level ICT skills were only too happy to acknowledge their weaknesses but were unhappy training was more often about the technology or what it could do, rather than being applied and generating real-world outcomes.