New Report Urges the United States to Adopt a Digital Skills Framework ASAP

WASHINGTON—To close the digital divide, the United States must adopt a new framework that will guide the country in ensuring Americans have the skill sets—digital skills—to safely and effectively use the internet and connected devices; perform everyday online tasks; and, if necessary, sign up for broadband affordability programs, according to a new report from the Open Technology Institute (OTI) at New America.

The report calls on the U.S. to create a national digital skills framework as soon as possible since states and territories have already begun to offer digital upskilling programs through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which was signed into law in 2021.

“Right now, we have no comprehensive or standardized way of measuring digital skills in the United States,” said Jessica Dine, a policy analyst at OTI and author of the report. “In the absence of a shared framework providing guidance on which digital skills are necessary and how to measure them, states and other IIJA stakeholders end up cobbling together different sources to assess their own digital landscapes. The lack of a shared approach means that states could follow these types of guidelines to the letter and still end up with incompatible assessments of their populations’ skills.”

In the report, OTI explains what digital skills are, why they matter, and the case for a national digital skills framework. It also offers a landscape analysis of existing digital skills frameworks from around the world.

The report then provides two pathways the United States can take to adopt and universally abide by a digital skills framework that codifies methods of measuring current digital skills and fosters agreement on shared goals:

• Expand or encourage the use of a framework that is already in use around the country or by relevant institutions.
• Create an original framework, which would be tailored and personalized to directly align with U.S. needs and fit within the existing policy landscape.

“True broadband access no longer hinges on a binary question of adoption—instead, true access hinges on the level of competency with which a person can engage online,” said Dine. “To digitally upskill the United States successfully, we need our initiatives to be grounded in data-driven insights on how digitally skilled Americans currently are and a shared understanding of what widespread digital upskilling should actually look like.”

Read the report.