The Government’s new Digital and Technologies Jobs Plan opens with a statement that few of us working in skills, employment or technology would challenge:
“Digital and technology jobs will be central to Britain’s future prosperity, security and public services.”
Over the next decade, around 800,000 digital and technology roles are expected to need filling in sectors backed by the Industrial Strategy. The Government wants 200,000 of those to be genuine entry-level jobs, equivalent to an average of 20,000 new opportunities each year.
These numbers are ambitious, but the most important aspect, in our opinion, is the recognition that the digital skills challenge cannot be solved by training more people and simply hoping that jobs will follow.
For many young people, career changers and people returning to work, the problem is that the route in is too difficult to see and, too often, the first opportunity is almost impossible to access.
The plan is structured around four linked ambitions: inspiring one million young people, opening entry-level opportunities at scale, delivering around local priorities and sustaining digital and AI skills across the wider workforce.
We need to stop treating this as a training problem alone
For years, the default response to digital skills shortages has often been another course, qualification or learning platform. Training matters, of course, but the Government’s own analysis shows that many trained and qualified people are still struggling to secure their first opportunity.
In cyber security, for example, the proportion of job adverts open to people with less than one year’s experience fell from 25% in 2022 to 16% in 2025. At the same time, 64% of adverts asked for between two and six years’ experience. People cannot gain experience if nobody is prepared to give them their first experience.
That is why the plan’s focus on employer demand is so important. Government, colleges and training providers can help people develop skills, confidence and knowledge, but employers must create the placements, apprenticeships, work experience and entry-level jobs through which those skills can be applied.
The plan also recognises that the system can be confusing and resource-intensive, particularly for small and medium-sized organisations. Employers are often approached by multiple programmes, each with different requirements, processes and paperwork. Many smaller organisations want to contribute but do not have the capacity to navigate several separate schemes.
Bringing those asks together through a Digital and Tech Skills Deal makes sense, but employers will still need practical local support to turn a good intention into a meaningful placement or job.
Inspiration must lead somewhere
The commitment to reach one million young people through meaningful and responsible AI and technology learning is welcome. Many people working in technology can identify the experience, person or opportunity that first made them believe a digital career was possible.
Relatable role models, employer encounters and practical experiences can change how young people see technology and their place within it. However, inspiration cannot be the end of the journey.
The plan includes a commitment from Tech She Can and our partners at Accenture to deliver an AI Roadshow during 2027, aiming to reach more than 10,000 young people aged 14 to 24 across eight UK areas, including Bristol. It will focus particularly on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with fewer established routes into technology.
This is a positive commitment. The question for all of us involved in the wider skills and employment system is what happens next.
Where does a young person go after attending a roadshow? How do they continue to build their skills? Who connects them with a placement, mentor or employer? What happens when transport, equipment, confidence or previous educational experience becomes a barrier?
An event can open somebody’s eyes to a possible future. A route into learning, work experience and employment is what allows them to pursue it. We need both.
The South West cannot be treated as one labour market
The plan says that talent exists in every postcode. That is true, but postcode still has an enormous influence on the opportunities people can access.
The South West has a strong and growing digital economy, but it is also rural, dispersed and economically varied. Transport, connectivity, access to equipment, caring responsibilities and the visibility of local opportunities can all affect whether somebody can begin and sustain a digital career.
Regional work has already identified rurality, transport and access to meaningful work experience as barriers that need to be addressed through partnership.
These challenges look different across Bristol, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset. A model that works in a well-connected city centre cannot simply be copied into a rural community and expected to achieve the same result.
The plan gives local and Mayoral Strategic Authorities an important role, alongside Local Skills Improvement Plans, in shaping delivery around their economies and labour markets. This is the right direction.
Across the South West, those local skills plans are increasingly connecting digital fluency with AI adoption, workforce productivity, employability, progression and leadership rather than treating digital skills as an isolated subject.
We now have an opportunity to turn that alignment into something people can actually navigate. The region does not need more disconnected activity. It needs visible pathways between schools, colleges, community organisations, training providers and employers.
Skills Bootcamps have an important role, and must remain connected to employment or progression
From 2026/27, 50% of Skills Bootcamps funding in non-devolved areas will be ringfenced for Industrial Strategy sectors, including Digital and Technologies, alongside health and construction.
That creates a significant opportunity to help people develop skills in areas where employer demand is expected to grow.
However, Skills Bootcamps will only fulfil their potential when they are practical, responsive to employers and connected to genuine progression. Completing a programme should leave somebody able to demonstrate what they can do, not simply describe what they have learned.
At Cosmic, we are currently delivering Level 3 Skills Bootcamps in AI for Workplace Productivity and Power Platform and Process Automation across Devon, Somerset and Dorset. The programmes provide 60 hours of learning focused on applying digital tools to workplace tasks.
Our intention is to use this work not only to support individual learners and businesses, but also to contribute evidence about what effective delivery looks like. That means understanding where people progress, where employers engage, what barriers remain and what needs to change.
The wider sector should be honest about these outcomes. Success cannot be measured by participation alone. We need to understand whether people are progressing into work, taking on new responsibilities, improving their security at work or applying their learning in ways that produce a genuine benefit.
Essential Digital Skills must remain the foundation
The focus on AI, cyber security and other frontier technologies is understandable. These capabilities will be important to the future economy and the UK’s national resilience.
But we should not talk about advanced technologies without addressing the Essential Digital Skills people need to participate in modern work in the first place.
The plan commits to refreshing the Essential Digital Skills Framework and Standards to reflect AI, online safety and changing workplace expectations. It also includes an ambition to help up to 10 million workers build practical AI skills through AI Skills Boost by 2030.
This is an important connection. AI skills cannot sit apart from wider digital capability. People need to be able to communicate, manage information, complete transactions, solve problems and stay safe online. Increasingly, they also need to understand how AI fits into those everyday tasks, where it can help and where human judgement remains essential.
We have already seen the potential of this approach through work led by FutureDotNow alongside Cosmic, Accenture, City & Guilds and Seetec. The South West pilot embedded Essential Digital Skills and practical AI tasks into employability provision rather than treating them as separate learning activities.
The pilot involved jobseekers over 12 weeks and covered 25 practical digital and AI work tasks. Within four months, 26% of participants entered employment, compared with 14% of those receiving standard Restart support during the same period. Participants also reported greater confidence, independence, motivation and willingness to try unfamiliar technologies. It was a small pilot and should be understood as such. But it provides useful evidence that digital skills can have a stronger effect when they are relevant, practical and embedded within somebody’s journey towards work.
The refreshed Essential Digital Skills Framework must therefore become more than a reference document. It needs to shape curriculum design, employability provision, workforce development and the way progress is evidenced. It must also be usable by smaller employers, community organisations and delivery partners, not only by those with dedicated skills teams.
Taking plan from intent to impact
The Digital and Technologies Jobs Plan confirms that the issues many of us have been working on locally are now firmly part of the national agenda.
It recognises that skills alone are not enough, that entry-level routes have narrowed, that employers need better support and that national ambition must be translated through local partnerships.
Our intention at Cosmic is to play an active part in that next stage.
We will continue to bring together our experience of digital inclusion, employability, Essential Digital Skills, workforce development and responsible AI adoption. We will use our Skills Bootcamps and wider programmes to test what works, contribute evidence and connect learning more closely with employment and progression.
We also want to work with friends and partners across the South West to make the national plan useful locally. This means supporting employers to turn commitments into meaningful opportunities, helping local partners connect provision rather than duplicate it and ensuring that rural communities and people facing the greatest barriers are present in the design of what comes next.