Capacity assessment

Assessing the Level of Knowledge

Digital skills are essential, therefore, there is a need to understand the existing eco-system and to conduct a meaningful training skills assessment and analysis in line with identified GovStack practices.

The three lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (Iowa State University n.d.) provide a clear understanding of the assessment criteria for knowledge, comprehension, and application.

Stage One

Before embarking on the capacity/skills assessments journey, there are two important aspects to take into consideration:

1. Which stage of digital transformation the country in question is at.

2. Which group of people will have their ‘digital’ skills assessed and what are their respective roles in the digital transformation journey.

Digital Assessment

As part of the preparations for the country implementation journey, it is essential for GovStack, to define the steps below:

• The targeted group to be assessed

• The assessment methodology

• The evaluation process/ criteria

• The different stages of the implementation journey and the respective skills needed at each stage.

When evaluating a country's level of knowledge and readiness, the following key roles have been identified, and have to be evaluated:

Technical teams:

• Agile S/W development approaches

• Cloud hosting

• Security

• Technical support (Help desks and Call centers)

• Open-Source usage

Administrative functions:

• Service definition and cataloguing

• Developing MOU’s for inter agencies cooperation

• Change management

• Process simplification

• Legislations changing to accommodate digital services

Policy and decision makers:

• Strategies setting

• Monitoring and evaluation

• Roadmaps for services implementations

• Prioritization

Interoperability

Shared services

Rapid Country Assessment

To ensure that there is a solid foundation for informed decision-making and guide strategic planning for capacity building, GovStack uses a rapid assessment tool to facilitate an initial assessment in early stages.

Goal of this tool is to ensure that the digital development training plan aligns with the unique status, requirements and challenges of the government and its ICT practitioners.

This Rapid Assessment Tool is intended to be used as a protocol for focus group discussion with the selected civil servants (ICT Practitioners) from Government Ministries and/Agencies to collect initial data alongside the country kick-off mission or preliminary engagement with country focal points in order develop a digital development training plan for the government ICT practitioners.

Current digital capability in country (RFI-4)

As one of the Capacity Building assessment tools, GovStack uses RFI 4 in order to nail our approach.

Goals/Objectives for RFI 4

• Define the recipients and their skills development needs

• Design the appropriate content based on the existing level of knowledge

Finally, it is important to develop a report showing the needs and the skills to be addressed in the country engagement journey

GovStack Skill Matrix

Inventory of the Capacity of staff and technology

Inventory of the staff and technology is also an important part of GovStack's capacity building activities. As a starting point, we have identified various ecosystems and assessment frameworks to help us build a skill matrix.

What is the GovStack Skill Matrix

The skill matrix shows the digital skill in question along with its level of proficiency for each stakeholder and is used to determine capacity-building needs, the topics that should be addressed, and the target group.

Resources

The following link leads to an ITU’s publication on digital skills assessment, describing important issues such as methodology, evaluation, and future steps: (ITU, 2020)

The link below shows USAID's approach to evaluate the digital ecosystem: USAID approach

The link below shows the World Bank’s toolkit to assess digital skills: World Bank’s toolkit

Capability and capacity needs assessment

Before embarking on the implementation journey, it is important to assess the capability and capacity needs of the identified GovStack profiles. This will enable the stakeholders to be matched with the requisite trainings and skills to enable implementation of GovStack's digitalization and Building Block approach.

The table below provides a comprehensive overview of the training resources for various stakeholders, the necessary skill sets, and necessary trainings that have been developed by various organizations.

Course	Description	Intended Persona
GovTech: Fundamentals and Key Concepts	The “GovTech: Fundamentals and Key Concepts” e-Learning course (GovTech 101) introduces the GovTech concepts, focus areas, solutions, and good practices to support digital transformation reforms of governments around the world. The GovTech 101 self-paced course consists of four modules: • (GovStack LMS module 1)The first module, “GovTech: The Latest Generation in Public Sector Reforms,” presents the definition of GovTech, the evolution of digital government, and GovTech approaches, and introduces the GovTech Global Partnership. • (GovStack LMS module 2), “GovTech Focal Areas: How They Work in Practice,” explains the four GovTech focal areas in detail. • (GovStack LMS module 3), “GovTech Maturity Index,” (GTMI) presents the objective, methodology, findings, and conclusions of the GTMI that measures the maturity of four GovTech focus areas. • (GovStack LMS module 4), “GovTech Solutions for Practitioners,” describes different types of digital government investments, gives examples from GovTech solutions in the four focal areas, and describes GovTech challenges and opportunities.	Public service officers
The Digital Academy (Technical Upskilling Guide)	Applications Development Applications Infrastructure Applications Management Cybersecurity Data Science and AI ICT Governance ICT Infrastructure Modelling and Simulations Product Management Sensors and IOT Tech Management	Public Service Leaders and Officers, Technology Teams (Software Engineers, DevOps Engineers, QA, Delivery Managers, UX Designers, Digital Services Manager, Business Analyst, Architects, Project Manager, CIO, Engagement Manager, Product Manager, Data Engineers and Scientists, CISO)

Apart from this information there is a plethora of documentation on the reference applications and implementation best practices available on https://docs.digit.org/ for SI partners to reference.

Any issues that they may come across can be posted on the support community.