Pipeline of talent for digital careers
Our priority is to develop a pipeline of digital talent to grow good, secure jobs for Queenslanders, boost the economy and ensure businesses and industry have the digital skills they need to be competitive in the marketplace.
Queensland has a shortage of professional digital skills. The 2022 ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse report, published in collaboration with Deloitte Access Economics, calls for government, industry, and educators to strengthen Australia’s IT workforce and industry by increasing the supply of digital workers to respond to increasing demand. The lack of a digitally-skilled workforce impacts our ability to participate effectively in an increasingly digitised world and poses a risk to Queensland’s economic productivity.
While the COVID-19 pandemic sped up the rate of digital transformation across Australia, it also reduced the number of digital professionals working here, mainly due to a fall in skilled migration.
This offers an opportunity for Queenslanders to take on a digital career, upskill, or change careers, especially in highly specialised fields such as cyber security, engineering and data analytics.
It also offers us an opportunity to increase our talent pool by attracting skilled workers to Queensland and upskilling under-represented cohorts, including:
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
- people with disability
- people in remote and regional communities.
Our 10-year goals
- Queensland has a highly skilled, growing and adaptive digital workforce that meets the needs of business, industry and community.
- The Queensland public sector workforce is a leader in digital skills and the delivery of innovative digital services.
Related initiatives
On 1 December 2020, we announced a $200 million Future Skills Fund, focussed on providing Queenslanders and businesses with the skills needed for the jobs of the future. A key initiative is the delivery of the Digital Professional Workforce Action Plan. This draws on investment of $8 million over 4 years to increase attraction to digital careers. The aim is to supply 10,000 digital professionals to Queensland by 2024.