Digital skills vs soft skills: новые компетенции профессионального развития на государственной службе

Abstract

Introduction: interaction on virtual communication platforms between the authorities and the population brings forward the issue of civil servants professional development. Objectives: to define a conceptual approach to the content of digital professional development programs for civil servants, to detail the strategic knowledge and tactical skills required in modern public administration in the context of the socio-political sphere digitalization. Methods: an expert interview; comparative-comparative method of analyzing digital platforms for advanced training of civil servants; content analysis of the “Leaders of Russia” and “Leaders of Russia. Politics” participants’ comments. Results: the article presents the data on a comparative study of educational platforms for advanced training of civil servants in the field of digital literacy. The framework of the necessary digital knowledge in the public management system has been proposed, aimed at the structural subdivisions of authorities responsible for strategic communications with the population. The results of the expert interviews and content analysis actualize the demand for digital competencies among the civil servants. Conclusions: the system of professional retraining of personnel for the civil service should meet the new requirements, namely to ensure the efficient functioning of e-government services, crowdsourcing platforms, official departmental web resources as well as groups and pages in social networks, and to maintain there a dialogue and interaction with the population. The new functionality of a civil servant arising from digitalization of the public administration system requires the development of new approaches to the competence-based model of his training and retraining. This brings forward the importance of digital competencies and skills complemented by a constant improvement of soft skills. The existing mechanisms for mastering these competencies in Russia make it possible to solve the problems of improving the entire system of public administration, but not with maximum efficiency. It is obvious that the market of advanced training services for civil servants is not sufficiently developed and the resources spent on these purposes aren’t used in the most optimal way.