Essential Competencies for Digital Workforce of Provincial Office in Thailand Using Delphi Technique

Abstract

This study aimed to study its required performance requirements and proposes a competency framework necessary for the digital workforce of the Provincial Offices in Thailand. The specific primary informants were determined as 17 people. The collecting process was performed using the Delphi technique and the electronic Delphi technique in two phases, totaling four rounds. In the first time, a structured interview was used to conduct online interviews for 15 people. Content validation was performed to determine issues of the competency framework essential for the digital workforce with 7-level scaled questionnaires, and then online reviews were collected between 10-15 people (2nd to 4th times). A consensus was found and confirmed four times with descriptive statistics, namely frequency, mean, standard deviation, mode, median, and the absolute value of the difference between mode and median, interquartile range, and application of the conceptual framework. The research findings revealed that the essential competency requirements for the digital workforce were covered in digital literacy (six aspects), digital skills (four aspects), and digital characteristics (four aspects). Consensus was confirmed for 84 issues. Therefore, it was concluded that 61 points for building an essential competency framework for the digital workforce made them effective in using digital technology as a labor-saving instrument, as well as for expanding the breadth of development of digital expertise to include members of the organization’s digital practitioner network. This development will benefit government agencies and the private sector, both national and international, in the future.