"There are already a lot of resources out there. Part of our job is showing businesses they don't have to go it alone" – Q&A with Holly Chate of FutureDotNow

“ There are already a lot of resources out there. Part of our job is showing businesses they don’t have to go it alone” – Q&A with Holly Chate of FutureDotNow AI Skills for Business Competency Framework Case Study Series “ There are already a lot of resources out there. Part of our job is showing businesses they don’t have to go it alone” Holly Chate , FutureDotNow Holly Chate is Chief Operating Officer at FutureDotNow, a UK charity focused on tackling the essential digital skills gap among working-age adults – particularly through the Essential Digital Skills Framework. FutureDotNow has collaborated with The Alan Turing Institute to help align foundational digital literacy with emerging artificial intelligence (AI) competencies. In this Q&A, Holly discusses why basic digital and AI literacy is critical for both individuals and businesses, how FutureDotNow is working to embed those skills at scale, and the importance of collaboration across the digital skills ecosystem. Key takeaways • Over 21 million working-age adults in the UK don’t have all 20 core digital skills needed for work, creating major risks for individuals, businesses, and the economy. • Building digital and AI literacy is essential for safe, effective use of technology in the workplace – and confidence is just as important as capability. • AI readiness starts with foundational digital skills such as knowing when to use AI, how to interpret outputs, and understanding ethical use. • The Essential Digital Skills Framework provides a national baseline and shared language to help businesses identify and close skills gaps. • Many digital transformation efforts fail because organisations overlook the training and support people need to use new tools effectively. • FutureDotNow is scaling impact through a coalition of more than 250 organisations; specific “pathways” for sectors, regions, and key populations; and the Workforce Digital Skills Charter. 2 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence2 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow Can you start by introducing yourself and FutureDotNow? Holly: I’m Holly Chate, Chief Operating Officer at FutureDotNow. We’re a UK charity focused on closing a very specific part of the digital skills gap – the essential digital skills needed for work. Right now, around 52% of working-age adults in the UK – about 21 million people – don’t have all 20 of the core digital tasks defined in the national framework. That’s a huge challenge for individuals, for business, and for economic growth. We work with businesses as our route to scale. If we can help employers support their own workforces, that creates a win-win for individuals and organisations alike. “ The key is ensuring that people have the foundations they need – not just to survive the digital shift, but to benefit from it.” 3 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence3 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow Why are digital and AI skills so important in today’s workforce? Holly: Digital has become part and parcel of everyday life – not just for consumers, but in the workplace too. That’s only accelerating with the arrival of AI. We’re seeing change happen at a pace we haven’t experienced before, and that can be overwhelming. Confidence becomes just as important as capability. The key for us is ensuring that people have the foundations they need – not just to survive this shift, but to benefit from it. Without those essential digital skills, people risk being left behind. And businesses will struggle to unlock the potential of new technologies if their people can’t use them safely and effectively. We know that 70% of digital transformation projects fail, and one of the reasons is that people don’t have the skills or confidence to adopt the technology effectively. There’s often a perception at leadership level that everyone is digitally confident, but that isn’t the case. I can think of at least one example where an organisation we work with rolled out technology in their business but hadn’t accompanied that with the requisite training and support for staff, who couldn’t in turn help their customers. What foundational skills do you see as essential for AI readiness? Holly: AI adds more urgency to our mission. While AI tools are often discussed as advanced or specialist, their effective use depends on basic digital confidence. You can’t interact with AI safely or thoughtfully if you’re not confident using digital tools in general. Some of the critical foundational skills include knowing when and how to use AI, understanding what the outputs mean, and recognising when they need to be questioned or checked. There’s also a big piece around confidentiality, ethics, and appropriate use. These are baseline competencies – and they’re strongly aligned with the Essential Digital Skills Framework we champion. 4 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence4 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence4 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow What barriers do you see to building these skills in the workforce? Holly: There are a few. One is just getting digital skills on the agenda for business leaders. In a tough economic climate with lots of competing priorities, that can be hard. Another challenge is that organisations often assume they need to create large-scale, expensive programmes from scratch – and that can be overwhelming. But there are already a lot of resources out there. Part of our job is showing businesses they don’t have to go it alone. They can learn from others, access curated content, and take small, practical steps – like building digital skills into onboarding activities or targeting key cohorts like apprentices. We’re also now able to evidence the financial value of doing this, which is helping make the case. What does the data say about the impact of the digital skills gap? Holly: It’s significant. Using the Essential Digital Skills Framework and modelling from the economic analysts Cebr, we’ve calculated that someone who builds the 20 core work tasks could earn, on average, £900 more per year. That increase in productivity translates to £23 billion in potential uplift to the UK economy, and £8.5 billion in annual profitability gains for businesses. And these are gains that would repeat year on year, as once someone becomes more productive, they stay more productive. We’ve also developed a calculator for employers so they can estimate what these gains might look like in their own organisations. For example, a medium-sized construction firm in the north west of England could see £100,000 a year in extra profit, and £300,000 in productivity gains, just from ensuring their workers have the 20 Essential Digital Skills for Work. How is FutureDotNow working to embed digital and AI skills at scale? Holly: We’ve built a coalition of more than 250 organisations, and one of the things we’ve worked hard to do is create an environment where people can share challenges openly. This is a space where competitors come together because the issue is too big for any one organisation to solve alone. It’s about creating a culture that makes digital skills visible and valued – where it’s normal to learn, share, and ask questions. We’ve also launched the Workforce Digital Skills Charter, which lets companies signal their commitment to this agenda. And we’re developing what we call “pathways” – routes to scale via sectors, places, and key populations. Construction has been our first focus. Working with Amey and Bouygues UK, we’re getting large contractors to sign the charter and looking at ways to embed essential skills in training for site teams and supply chains. Education and Medical pathways are also up and running now, with Gateway Qualification and AELP leading the charge in education, and the NHS and Royal College of Surgeons doing the same for healthcare. Upskilling 21 million working age adults is a big challenge, so this is a team game. The power comes from working together behind a shared mission, and it’s so exciting to see so many organisations getting behind this. We stand a chance of making a change! 5 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow Where does the Essential Digital Skills Framework fit into this landscape? Holly: We need a shared language between business, government, and training providers – that’s where frameworks really help. The Essential Digital Skills Framework gives clarity in a space that can otherwise feel very ambiguous. “Digital” can mean anything from using an app to pay for your parking to building advanced machine learning models. Having a defined set of tasks – eight foundational, 26 for life, and 20 for work – helps businesses and individuals understand what’s expected and where the gaps are. We use the framework as a national baseline. We’ve recently reviewed it to ensure it stays relevant, particularly with the rise of AI. Through a collaborative project with The Alan Turing Institute, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Education, and others, we’ve identified natural points where AI tools and safe use practices can be embedded. The goal is to keep the framework stable enough for training and qualifications to align with, while still updating it regularly so it reflects the real needs of the workforce. How have FutureDotNow and the Turing worked together on AI and digital skills? Holly: We’ve worked closely with the Turing to bring together our understanding of foundational digital literacy with their work on AI competencies. One of the challenges we both recognised is that AI systems are often built without enough consideration of end users’ digital confidence – leading to tools that are too complex, opaque, or misaligned with the needs of their audiences. The Turing team adopted the Essential Digital Skills framework as definitions of digital literacy as part of their AI Skills for Business Competency Framework, and the Turing has supported FutureDotNow in thinking through the future implications of AI in the workforce – especially around how people engage with and critically evaluate AI outputs. Collaborative working is critical if we are to ensure our respective frameworks stay relevant and inclusive rather than siloed and duplicative. The collaboration with the Turing Institute has provided an impartial lens to the work, and through this collaboration we are both more able to address emerging skills challenges, ensuring essential digital skills capture the potential impacts of AI, and that we are cultivating a new generation of AI professions with empathy and appreciation of the digital skills challenges faced by the users of the systems they create. The Alan Turing Institute has been invaluable as an advocate of FutureDotNow, serving as an independent convenor and champion for our work. 6 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow Looking ahead, what’s next for FutureDotNow? Holly: Two big things. First, we’re continuing to scale our Workforce Digital Skills Charter, with a goal of getting all of the FTSE 100 and 250 companies signed up. Second, we’re focusing on the pathways I mentioned earlier – how we reach the 21 million people without these key skills. That includes working through sectors such as construction and healthcare, regions via local authorities, and specific populations such as those people not currently in work. We look forward to continuing to work with The Alan Turing Institute to deliver our mission. This is a five-year strategy and we’re in year one – but we’re already seeing great traction, with major employers stepping up. The need is urgent, but we’ve got a model we think can deliver positive change at scale. “ It’s about creating a culture that makes digital skills visible and valued – where it’s normal to learn, share, and ask questions.” 7 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence7 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow This case study is published under the AI Skills for Business Competency Framework workstream. The framework sets out the high-level competencies required to ensure the safe and responsible introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to organisations from the general workforce, through to AI specialists and leadership. It is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and is funded by the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme, which empowers UK businesses in high-growth sectors, driving productivity and economic growth through the adoption of AI. This work is supported by a consortium including Innovate UK, Digital Catapult, The Alan Turing Institute, STFC Hartree Centre and BSI. Since its launch in May 2024, the Framework been adopted across public, private and government organisations in the UK. We would like to extend our gratitude to Holly Chate, Chief Operating Officer at FutureDotNow, for her significant contributions to the development of this case study. Special thanks to Alexandra Araujo Alvarez, Senior Research Community Manager for BridgeAI, Dominica D’Arcangelo, Programme Manager, and Marie Chappell, Programme Coordinator, from the Alan Turing Institute for their leadership and support. We also thank Stuart Gillespie for his role as the technical writer for this and other case studies in the programme. This work is led by Dr. Matthew Forshaw (Senior Advisor for Skills) and Dr. Clementina Ramirez (Skills Officer). Dr. Vera Matser (Head of Strategic Capabilities) is Principal Investigator for BridgeAI at The Alan Turing Institute. For any comments, questions, or collaboration opportunities with BridgeAI, please email: [email protected]. Acknowledgement Authors and Contributors Stuart Gillespie: Technical Writer (0009-0003-1402-0184) Holly Chate: FutureDotNow, Chief Operating Officer Matthew Forshaw: The Alan Turing Institute, Senior Advisor for Skills (0000-0001-7014-9837) Clementina Ramirez: The Alan Turing Institute, Skills Officer (0000-0002-6643-8828) This publication is shared under CC-BY 4.0 License on Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17435071 8 Business applications of Artificial Intelligence8 Q&A: Holly Chate, FutureDotNow Learn more at bridgeai.net