Canada needs digital skills to harness IoT opportunities: report

OTTAWA — If Canada is to reap the benefits of the global digital shift, it needs to stack its skilled labour deck or risk falling behind, said a new report by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). In its national digital talent strategy released Wednesday, ICTC outlined a series of recommendations aimed at "strengthening Canada's competitiveness, creating jobs and growing the digital economy." The time is right for such a strategy because although technology has always been the essence of any high-performing economy, there's a "new wave of digital transformation and a different magnitude of development that will have a profound impact on our economy and the labour market in the next number of years," Namir Anani, ICTC president and CEO, said during the report's launch event Wednesday morning at the Museum of Nature. This new wave is the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), which Anani said is going to be a $19 trillion global economy by 2020 — larger than the yearly economic output of Europe. "The recipe for success in this dynamic and evolving environment is dependent on our ability as a nation to increase investments in innovation, equip our workforce with relevant skills, produce higher-value goods and services and expand trade," the report said, adding that 182,000 skilled information and communications technology workers will be required in Canada by 2019. According to the report issued by the research and policy organization, the mobile sector is one with a high demand for skilled individuals. "ICTC has shown that Canada's GDP grows 0.08 per cent for every one per cent increase in mobile technology adoption due to increased productivity. GDP grows an additional 0.069 per cent for every one per cent increase in wireless subscriptions due to higher subscription revenues of telecommunication service providers," the report said, calculating a $2.46 billion increase to the GDP for every one per cent increase in mobile adoption. Industry has an important role to play in this strategy, particularly companies offering broadband and wireless services, "because at the end of the day, they're the beneficiary of some of the economic activities that will happen," Anani said in an interview. "And I guarantee you that the larger companies … that's what's on their minds at the moment — to roll out the best and the fastest capabilities across the country." The strategy's seven recommendations touch on initiatives such as engaging young people in computer science, recruiting from underrepresented demographics such as women, aboriginal people and people with disabilities, incentivizing digital entrepreneurs and expanding digital literacy. "If the relevant skills are not easily accessible, companies will consider it to be high risk to invest in new production technologies," the report said. According to ICTC, Canadian companies invest less in digital technologies, on average, than American ones. "Additionally, ICT investment in Canada in recent years has grown at less than half of the U.S. rate, which suggests a growing gap between the two countries," the report said. Employers are also having difficulty recruiting people because only six per cent of post-secondary graduates are leaving Canadian institutions with degrees in ICT fields, Greg Fergus, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, said at Wednesday morning's event. "So unless these problems get fixed, unless we take the steps necessary, then Canadian workers' productivity levels will continue to decline and, with that, so will Canada's prosperity," Fergus said. The strategy proposed by ICTC is "urgently needed," Fergus said, as "digital technologies permeate every sector of our lives." That's reflected in the fact that the industry's job growth outpaced that of the overall economy and that the ICT sector contributed to 4.5 per cent of Canada's total output, he said. "Not only does the digital economy and ICT workers benefit from this impressive, impressive performance, the industry's innovations are enabling other sectors — from the assembly lines to the service industry — to increase their productivity, reduce their costs and boost their export opportunities," Fergus said. The ICTC report recommends pushing government to move more services online so that people become more confident navigating a digital landscape. But the federal government is already doing this, and it's up to businesses to catch up, Corinne Charette, senior assistant deputy minister at Innovation Canada, said during the event. Charette said consumers aren't reluctant to adopt technology, as they've become accustomed to using it in their everyday lives, but small- and medium-sized business aren't adopting it quickly enough because there's still a perception of risk. "It needs to be clear that it's a lot riskier not to participate in the digital economy because you're going to be outsold in the global value chain by the small business that does," said Charette, who has recently assumed the newly created role of Innovation Canada's chief digital officer in addition to work as senior assistant deputy minister. In an interview, Charette said the new role is to "basically craft a road map for how, as a department, we can be more digital in our interactions with business and industry going forward, not only within our department but also across the federal government and in close partnership with our (provincial, territorial) and municipal partners." For example, instead of a business owner having to go through a "fragmented, multi-step process" with different levels of government to secure permits and licensing, she would work with municipal and provincial counterparts to "provide one-stop capability that will allow an entrepreneur to fill in the necessary information, so it gets transmitted to all the necessary government jurisdictions and speed up the process of business creation." Anani said ICTC will be striking task forces with industry, academic and government stakeholders to advance the strategy's recommendations. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Canada needs digital skills to harness IoT opportunities: report

News | March 9, 2016

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Canada needs digital skills to harness IoT opportunities: report

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