1) The Digital Competency Center provides a comprehensive digital training program from basic, daily-life digital capacities to vocational training for every Korean in their vicinity.

2) The curricula are catered to each individual’s level, with basic, intermediate (daily life), and advanced courses, and to their various backgrounds, such as multi-cultural families, senior citizens, farmers, fishers, and small business owners.

3) We send Digital Competency Center Buses to marginalized regions across Korea to provide them with digital education opportunities.

4) We operate a help desk for residents to handle their issues with digital devices in real-time.

The Digital Competency Center project has been underway for three years since 2020. Our 1,000+ Digital Competency Centers across Korea have provided a total of 1.5 million people annually with digital education, while creating a total of 14,000 jobs by harnessing local human resources (high school and college graduates, women in ICT on involuntary career breaks, and retirees from related fields as digital instructors and supporters for the program.

We established a panel for Digital Competency across central and local governments (including the Ministry of Science and ICT, National Information Society Agency), which allows us to identify and respond to educational needs stemming from the Digital Transformation. This has enabled us to function as the center of digitalization for the local society and economy.

As our Centers are in residents’ vicinity with the help of local governments, they have more convenient access to education and can solve issues with digital devices. Hiring local educational companies, instructors, and supporters contributed to revitalizing the local economies. In Gyeonggi Province, we collaborated with the Immigration & Integration Program, through which Filipino migrants supported the training of other migrant women and children from multicultural families.

Approximately 1.54 million people have taken digital competency courses from September 2020 to September 2022. The trainees’ level of digital competency improved by 24.7% in 2020 and 28.8% in 2021.

• Number of Trainees:
  • Sep 2020 to Feb 2021 (6 months): 428,000
  • Apr 2021 to Dec 2021 (9 months): 656,000
  • Apr 2022 to Sep 2022 (9 months, still in progress): 457,000

We measured the improvement in our trainees’ digital competency to objectively assess the outcomes of our training program. The improvement in digital competency compares the digital competencies of our trainees before and after our training. Our assessment was based on the measurement scale found in “The Report on the Digital Divide,” a study on the digital competencies of Koreans, including the marginalized. In conclusion, we found that our trainees’ level of digital competency improved by 24.7% in 2020 and 28.8% in 2021.

In 2021, the program achieved the following results: 17 metropolitan and 215 local governments in Korea participated in this project, training a total of 656,000 residents (including senior citizens and the disabled) to foster digital competency essential for this era of non-face-to-face economic activities. More than 20% of our training programs were catered to marginalized groups such as senior citizens, farmers, fishers, and people on work hiatus, serving as a social safety net.

We offered a diversified curriculum for small business owners and office workers who could not commit to a fixed schedule or venue during regular work hours. To accommodate their needs, about 20% of the courses were held after work hours and during weekends in 2021. The fixed schedules at the Digital Competency Center led to certain regions being detached from education. To solve this issue, we sent Digital Competency Center buses to educationally marginalized areas for at-home education.

These buses, equipped with digital kiosks, tablet PCs, etc., provided hands-on, practical training for people to be able to use digital devices in their daily lives. People could also visit these buses to get immediate help concerning their daily troubles with digital devices. We also installed portable booths in public facilities such as schools and hospitals to provide even more people with such educational opportunities.

Collaboration with local governments is an important success factor. We established a panel for Digital Competency across central and local governments (including the Ministry of Science and ICT, National Information Society Agency), through which we were able to enhance cooperation in budgeting, providing venues and region-specific curricula for Digital Competency Centers, efficiently running the Centers, and promoting this project.

Also, Sharing know-how to success and establishing a cooperative system with related institutions is important for our Digital Competency Centers to continue developing systematically. To this end, we have identified and operated cooperative programs through MOUs, meeting educational needs, sharing venues, designing interlinked education programs, and promoting them nationally. We provide support for digital transition in various areas by adding to the curricula offered by our partner institutions.

We plan to provide our content to ODA recipient countries in 2023, thereby contributing to bridging the digital divide across the globe. 20 topics will be chosen from the 70 currently provided by our Centers, and the textbooks and video content will be updated and translated into English and Spanish. The Digital Competency Center is collaborating with domestic companies to expand its realm to vocational training in a digitalized society.

Jointly with Coupang, our centers in Gyeonggi Province provided opportunities to learn how to use digital devices and apps for those who wanted to work at Coupang but had to give up because they didn’t have such capacities. Our centers in Jeonnam Province, jointly with Yogiyo, provided small business owners with opportunities to learn how to use delivery apps and increase sales through online marketing.

The Digital Competency Center has strived to prepare for the Digital Transformation despite the ongoing pandemic, pursuing an unprecedented digital competency training program catering to the different capacities of Korean learners and contributing to a digitally inclusive world. All 17 metropolitan and 226 local governments in Korea participate in the Digital Competency Center project. As our Centers are easily accessible, local residents can have better, quicker access to education and support concerning digital issues, as well as a customized curriculum based on their educational needs.

Our Centers offered various online and at-home courses to prevent learning loss. Also, about 20% of the courses were held after work hours and during weekends in 2021 for small business owners and office workers. As a result, the satisfaction of the 2021 curriculum reached 98%. Establishing a cooperative system with partner institutions is important t for this project to continue developing.

The Digital Competency Center’s YouTube channel provides educational content for users to foster digital competency in a self-directed manner.
The said content’s curriculum for digital competency, offered in Korean as well as in other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese, is divided into three levels: basics, daily life (intermediate), and advanced. A link to the content provided by the Digital Competency Center can be found in this page.