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An Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AlphaBeta research study has found that Australia needs an additional 6.5 million newly skilled and re-skilled digital workers by 2025 – over 79 per cent more workers compared to those in the industry today.
The report, titled Unlocking APAC's Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches, has also found that New Zealand’s Digital Skills Survey 2020 by NZTech revealed that Aotearoa requires an additional 4,822 digitally skilled employees by 2022, an increase of more than 41 per cent, based on 2017 forecasts.
Aiming to accelerate digital learning worldwide, AWS has launched the “AWS Skill Builder”, a digital learning experience available in more than 200 countries and territories, which provides free skills training to millions of people around the globe.
The company noted that anybody with an internet connection and a desire to learn can quickly and easily access over 500 free on-demand courses – including nearly 60 new cloud computing classes added in the past year.
AWS Skill Builder is designed to meet different learning goals and styles with some content offered up to 16 languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
The launch of AWS Skill Builder is part of Amazon’s investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to provide free cloud computing skills training to 29 million people around the world by 2025.
AWS is helping to change that with the new generation of individuals coming into the workforce, according to Phil Rodrigues, head of security for APJ Commercial at AWS.
“Our customers tell us that cloud security skills are hard to find in the industry."
"Examples like our collaboration with SECedu [at UNSW] make sure there are pathways for students to build the important skills they need to meet these evolving industry requirements, both today and into the future,” Rodrigues said.
The AWS and AlphaBeta report revealed that there are four types of workers who will need to acquire digital skills by 2025: digital workers, non-digital workers, today’s students and disenfranchised individuals (those who are unemployed or involuntarily excluded from the labour force).
AWS also published a case study with UNSW, highlighting its CyberSecurity Education Network (SECedu), a university program that aims to reduce the shortfall of cyber and cloud security workers across the industry. More than 120 students have now completed the course, with graduates taking roles at Cisco, Atlassian and AWS, among others.
According to Richard Buckland, director of SECedu and professor of cyber security at UNSW, the approach aims to rethink the way the next generation are taught by working with professionals in the industry to accelerate the education that can be given to students.
"We feel this is an incredible opportunity to help close this gap, together we are helping shape a cyber secure future for Australia,” Professor Buckland said.
AWS is set on delivering digital skills programs in partnership with academic institutions, helping them to incorporate digital skills into their degrees and the course materials for UNSW's CyberSecurity Education Network (SECedu) cyber security training course is designed to help students develop cloud-oriented security skills because the demand for innovative and secure cloud services is growing.
Rodrigues added that AWS is deeply invested in helping to address the digital skills challenge.
"We are committed to offering a robust program of digital skills development to ensure our future IT industry workers can deliver the leading-edge capabilities that Australian and New Zealand organisations need," Rodrigues concluded.
[Related: ACSC: Iranian hackers target Australia]
Nastasha is a Journalist at Momentum Media, she reports extensively across veterans affairs, cyber security and geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific. She is a co-author of a book titled The Stories Women Journalists Tell, published by Penguin Random House. Previously, she was a Content Producer at Verizon Media, a Digital Producer for Yahoo! and Channel 7, a Digital Journalist at Sky News Australia, as well as a Website Manager and Digital Producer at SBS Australia. Nastasha started her career in media as a Video Producer and Digital News Presenter at News Corp Australia.
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