Article submitted by Australian Public Service Commission.
There is a growing demand for data and digital skills in the Australian Public Service (APS). With a growing shortfall in supply and increasing competition for talent between the private and public sector, there has never been a greater need for agencies to understand, support, and manage their data and digital specialist workforce. In the context of national and global data and digital skills shortages, agencies must also look to improve the data and digital skills of their broader workforce.
The APS Career Pathfinder run by the APS Digital Profession helps HR professionals position their agency’s workforce for the future. Based on the internationally recognised Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) and Data Capability Framework (DCF), it builds understanding of data and digital roles and the skills they require. This helps HR professionals to support the design and creation of position descriptions and job advertisements and use relevant language to attract and recruit appropriately skilled candidates for data and digital roles.
It can also help employees navigate and plan their careers in data and digital in the APS, or to better understand how to transition to one. By creating a user profile to capture their data and digital skills, employees can find roles that match their skills and interest. This also helps identify any gaps and upskilling required to progress their career in the APS.
Through anonymised data from user profiles, HR professionals can access organisational digital skills profiles to identify gaps. This can assist workforce planning and identify organisational training needs. Where employees choose to make their profiles searchable, HR professionals with the required access can identify talent internally and externally to build taskforces and project teams requiring specific data and digital skills.
The tool also supports managers to have effective performance discussions with staff. By enabling employees to create and export a learning and development plan, it helps inform conversations to identify capability gaps, how to address them, and any upskilling needed for career progression.
To gain the most out of APS Career Pathfinder to help build your workforce capability, ask staff in your agency to use the tool and create or update their user profile. You can provide feedback on the tool to contribute to further improvements to digitalprofession@apsc.gov.au.
Find out more on the APS Career Pathfinder website or contact digitalprofession@apsc.gov.au.
You can also contact the Digital Profession to request a demonstration or Workforce Manager access to help you identify talent.