There’s been a fair bit of discussion at the Labour Party Conference on the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to boost the economy and improve living standards.
At last count, there were 53 planned events covering tech, data and AI. However, tech’s potential to drive productivity and efficiency can only be realised if businesses hire or train staff with the necessary skills.
At a roundtable on Monday 23rd September, hosted by Labour Digital and Multiverse, people talked about how the UK can break down barriers to opportunity and make the benefits of technology skills available to everyone.
In the room were Labour MPs, representatives from civil society (including the ODI), big tech companies, unions and digital businesses from various industries.
As the conversation progressed, delegates expressed concern that some sectors remain unengaged with technology’s current and future role, despite all the hype surrounding AI.
McKinsey notes that change is happening at lightning speed and predicts that “by 2025, smart workflows and seamless interactions among humans and machines will likely be as standard as the corporate balance sheet, and most employees will use data to optimise nearly every aspect of their work”.
Yet there was an awareness among people at the roundtable that, in the UK, there is a growing gap between the potential of technology and existing workforce capability. This threatens the government’s ambition to become a global science and technology super-power by 2030.
The skills problem
The new Growth and Skills Levy, set to replace the former Apprenticeship Levy, will allow employers to use 50% of their contributions to fund training through routes other than apprenticeships. The government hopes that this will give more flexibility, for example, allowing more experienced workers to upskill or retrain. This could be good news for businesses keen to provide tech training. However, participants at the Labour Digital roundtable suggested that groups of people could be left behind, including the very young, older workers, freelancers and micro businesses. Various reasons were suggested, from nervousness about technology to people feeling demotivated in their current jobs and reluctant to undertake training.
Moreover, there is evidence in recent literature that suggests new technology often goes under-utilised in companies, and data is frequently mistrusted. Multiverse’s Mapping the data skills gap intelligence report 2024 found that while businesses are investing substantial amounts in software, they aren’t matching that investment with skills training, leaving employees at a disadvantage.
The 2024 Global skills report from Coursera underscores the pressing need for action, with the UK’s global ranking in key skills dropping from 28th in 2022 to 64th in 2023. At a senior level, there can be a reluctance to invest without up-front evidence – through use-cases – of likely returns to the bottom line or a lack of willingness to match the investment in software with investment in skills training. Forrester’s 2023 Your data culture is in crisis report indicated that 41% of employees often mistrust the data available to them for decision-making, and according to Multiverse, as much as a third of the time spent by employees working with data is unproductive, with just under two-thirds reporting that they don’t even have basic Excel skills.
Research also shows that there are geographical challenges. Research published in the Heliyon Journal and two recent studies from the University of Aberystwyth found that industries in urban centres such as London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast may have benefitted from recent technology developments.
However, rural areas often remain underserved, with skills gaps and inadequate digital infrastructure potentially slowing technology adoption. Specific sectors, including agriculture and construction, are also falling behind in adopting new technologies. This threatens the potential of digital and data to enable efficiency and productivity gains, quality improvements, and competitive advantages. As one of the MPs at the Labour Digital event, Samantha Niblett, mentioned, the goal must be to “give people the opportunity to work well and earn well no matter who they are.”
Upskilling the citizen
To achieve this, we need data and digital literacy for everyone but to date, efforts to address skills gaps have been fragmented and sector or region-specific. In England, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Digital Talent Pipeline and the West Midlands’ partnerships between universities and industries have shown promise but remain focused on local economies.
In Wales, the PACE Cymru project, led by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD), helps SMEs adopt advanced technologies across rural regions such as Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire, and Ceredigion. Northern Ireland’s Smart Belfast Framework is aligned with the UK government’s approach to AI, aiming to establish Belfast as a hub for AI and digital innovation. In Scotland, the Data Lab and the Data Skills Gateway have made strides in defining workplace data literacy and developing frameworks for AI upskilling and in the UK.
Meanwhile, the Government’s Flexible AI Upskilling Fund has provided a £7.4m subsidy for AI skills training for SMEs, but it also requires businesses to cover 50% of the costs, potentially limiting accessibility and reach. While these initiatives are valuable, they leave gaps in skills development across the UK.
It’s also evident that most initiatives currently focus on the individual as an employee. They emphasise the benefits to the workforce and businesses rather than the benefits to the individual as a citizen. If we consider the citizen, we can see that the barriers are social as well as geographic with women, adults over 65 and the economically inactive most disadvantaged. There is a growing digital divide between those who have access to information and communications technology and those who do not, giving rise to inequalities in access to opportunities, knowledge, services and goods.
To achieve a world where data works for everyone, we urgently need a unified, nationwide solution that addresses digital and data skills gaps at scale, spanning all sectors and regions of the UK. It’s hoped that the forthcoming AI Opportunities Action Plan will set out how we can boost the take-up of technology, including ensuring that we have the necessary infrastructure and the talent and skillsets to utilise it. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) recently tendered a project to build a national AI Skills Hub, which can also help to address the gaps. Such an entity could help tackle inequalities through job creation, skills development, and business growth. To do so, rational and accessible pathways must be provided for employers and employees to identify highly relevant training for their needs.
Any approach to building digital and data skills must carefully balance technical training with other skills, such as building communities, service design, data innovation, and leadership. Only in this way can we ensure that technology has a stimulating effect for businesses, produces positive impacts for people and communities and leads to the best social and economic outcomes for everyone.
Emma Thwaites is the director of global policy and corporate affairs at the Open Data Institute (ODI). Emma’s portfolio at the ODI encompasses public policy, events and engagement, data as culture, communications and marketing, product and innovation, ODI Membership and the ODI Summit.
She has over 30 years of strategic business experience, gained in senior roles at the BBC and UK Cabinet Office, and founding – and running – her successful consultancy practice. A former journalist and editor, Emma is a member of the ODI’s Executive Leadership team and advises the board. She is a board director of OpenUK.
