There is widespread agreement of the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) in building equitable prosperity and globally competitive economies. Effective use of these technologies, however, requires building new capacities and skills, here referred to as eskills, not only in the working force but the entire population. These skills are in very short supply all over the developing world, and are of particular concern in South Africa. In order to appropriately address this issue, South African government has taken a systematic and systemic approach, to address the matter and has developed an approach involving a number of stakeholders from all spheres of government, business, education, civil society and organized labor. That effort led to the e-Skills Summit (2010), which provided the guidelines for the creation of the national e-skills policy named the National e-Skills Plan of Action (NeSPA). This paper, based on descriptive case study methodology, brings a portrayal of that systematic and systemic approach. The paper, aimed at academics, practitioners and policy-makers, also depicts the e-skilling key success factors, expected impact of NeSPA, and the principles for monitoring and evaluation. The paper ends with a brief description of some lessons learned during the initial implementation phase of NeSPA.
The development of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) in recent decades represents a material foundation for a networked society, which requires profoundly new ways of thinking, working and living, including building of new capacities for the entire nation. In that regard, South Africa (SA) needs a new approach to ICT skilling ('eskilling') in order to achieve a positive impact on meeting the national goals and aspirations. It was recently concluded at some relevant gatherings in SA that some social and "intuition" related skills ("soft" skills) needed to be included in the e-skilling agenda, if the majority of citizens were to be successfully included in the emerging Knowledge Society. Hence, SA e-Skills Institute introduced the concepts of "astute" use of e-skills for personal growth and self-reliance (eAstuteness) and collective development through use of ICT (e-Social Astuteness) into its strategic plans. However, to this point it was not clear how the concept of e-Astuteness and e-Social Astuteness relate to the e-skills policy-making framework in South Africa. Thus, we set an objective of exploring the fit of these still novel concepts into the SA e-Skills Policy-making Framework. Utilising approach of theory development, this paper attempts to give answer to that question by suggesting that the concepts of e-Astuteness and e-Social Astuteness are cross-cutting throughout several elements of this framework. It is envisaged that this study will benefit e-skills policy-makers, practitioners and researchers who would, hopefully, advance our work.
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