CFP

DigitalSkills2023: Scaling data skills for multidisciplinary impact

Durban University of Technology

Durban, South Africa, February 15-17, 2023

Conference website	https://4irdigitalskills.co.za/index.php/nemisa-colloquium-2023
Submission link	https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=digitalskills2023
Abstract registration deadline	September 30, 2022
Submission deadline	November 30, 2022
Review deadline	December 15, 2022

Topics: data science digital skills data skills digital development

Data is today a new and desirable commodity that needs to be an important part of a massive digital skilling effort (World Economic Forum, 2022). The proliferation of data and the affordance of modern digital technologies has therefore triggered many organizations to contemplate data skills as part of their core skills needs. Increasingly, smart governments and organisations require data skills to gain insights and foresight, secure themselves, and for improved decision-making and efficiency. However, data skills are scarce (Markow et al., 2017; Radovilsky et al., 2018), and even more challenging is the inconsistency of the associated training programs with most curated for the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Saltz et al., 2018). Nonetheless, the interdisciplinary yet agnostic nature of data means that there is an opportunity to expand data skills into the non-STEM disciplines as well (Gascó-Hernandez & Schaupp, 2022; Jie et al., 2020).

The NEMISA 2023 Conference (Colloquium) on “Scaling data skills for multidisciplinary impact” seeks to bring together government, international organisations, academia, industry, organised labour and civil society to deliberate on how data skills can be scaled in South Africa for social and economic impact. Some of the questions that the events will engage on include, but are not limited to:

Amongst the dimensions of data skills that might be addressed are:

How can data skills be scaled into government and organisations to produce greater insights and decision-making?
How can use data skills to share the limited resources that are available, especially in marginal contexts?
How can rural and local communities benefit from gaining data skills?
What case studies can we adopt for scaling data skills?
What career pathways are necessary to scale data skills?
What are the likely forms of resistance that can be expected when attempting to scale data skills and what are the solutions?

IMPORTANT DATES

Colloquium, and Postgraduate Symposium Call for Papers:	12 August 2022
Paper submissions deadline:	30 October 2022
Reviewer comments distributed:	30 November 2022
Updated paper submissions are due:	15 January 2023
Colloquium and Postgraduate symposium:	15-17 February 2023

POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM 2023

The postgraduate symposium is dedicated to Honours, Masters and Doctoral students focusing on the future of work, data science, digital skills, the emerging technologies and other related emerging disciplines to engage in intellectual and research discourse with supervisors, practitioners, and leading academics. There are two categories for presentations:

Register and submit your poster on https://easychair.org/conferences/DigitalSkills2023. The registration cost is sponsored by NEMISA.

BEST PAPER AWARDS

The following awards will be presented:

Best academic research paper
Best practitioner paper
Sponsored best paper by track (according to sponsorships)
Best student paper (Postgraduate Symposium)

NEMISA BACKGROUND

NEMISA has a mandate to develop capacity in South Africa to ensure that South Africans have the necessary digital skills (including broadcasting) to participate in the 4IR. A part of the mandate is to establish an innovative research network focusing on digital skills with links to public and/or private university networks locally and internationally. The aim of the network is to “provide the evidence-based digital based basis, through research and other available means, for decisions on how to innovatively address the opportunities and systemic challenges in achieving digital skills capacity in South Africa”. We seek solutions that are application-oriented and make a tangible social and economic difference.

EVENT POSITIONING

The conference aims to establish an innovative and collaborative research network by providing a platform for government, academia, industry, education and civil society to share research, data and trends that will contribute to refining the NEMISA mandate to develop the necessary digital skills capacity of South Africa.

REFERENCES

Gascó-Hernandez, M., & Schaupp, C. (2022). AI in Government Minitrack. HICSS. https://hicss.hawaii.edu/tracks-56/digital-government/#ai-in-government-minitrack

Jie, Z., Ying, J., & Ye, T. (2020). Exploration on the construction of big data basic course for non computer major. 15th International Conference on Computer Science and Education, ICCSE 2020, Iccse, 623–626. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCSE49874.2020.9201894

Markow, W., Braganza, S., Taska, B., Miller, S. M., & Hughes, D. (2017). The Quant Crunch: How the demand for data science skills is disrupting the job market.

Radovilsky, Z., Hedge, V., Acharya, A., & Uma, U. (2018). Skills Requirements of Business Data Analytics and Data Science Jobs: A Comparative Analysis. Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Management, 16(1), 82–101.

Saltz, J., Armour, F., & Sharda, R. (2018). Data Science Roles and the Types of Data Science Programs. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 43, 33. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.04333

World Economic Forum. (2022). Future of work: Key takeaways from Davos experts | World Economic Forum. Davos 2022: Future of Work. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/future-work-jobs-davos-experts/

Submission Guidelines

You can download the paper template from the Epic Series in Education Science - https://easychair.org/publications/for_authors.

We anticipate four different genres of papers:

Practitioner papers reflecting on industry experiences – should not exceed 6 pages
Full academic papers reflecting completed research – should not exceed 14 pages including references (for publication in the proceedings)
Short papers reporting on work in progress – should not exceed 6 pages including references.
Case studies – should not exceed 6 pages including references and exhibits.
Abstracts – should not exceed 3 pages including references.

Submit papers on EasyChair https://easychair.org/conferences/DigitalSkills2023.

Full papers to be submitted should have completed analyses and documentation of results. Papers should be submitted as a ‘.pdf’ or ‘.docx’ file.

The Conference committee has established a maximum of 2 papers per author (including co-authored papers). Any submissions beyond this limit by a given author will be eliminated from the review process.

Author(s)’ name(s) should not appear in the body of the paper and the abstract. References to institutions, sponsors, and unpublished/published works should be eliminated if these references will identify any author.

English is the language of the conference and of all submissions.

Any submission that does not conform to the above guidelines will be eliminated from the review process.

List of Topics

We invite you to submit your full research papers, practitioner ideas, data, research and case studies to the colloquium in the following tracks and topics:

The future of work in the 4IR
Re-skilling and up-skilling within the 4IR
Scaling data skills
Microcredentials for data skills
Life-long and life-wide learning in the 4IR
The sharing economy
Digital skills in Artificial intelligence, Blockchain and other emerging technologies

Committees

CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS

Prof Colin Thakur – Durban University of Technology

Prof Tendani Mawela – University of Pretoria

Prof Hossana Twinomurinzi – University of Johannesburg

POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM CO-CHAIRS

Ms Nkosikhona Msweli – University of South Africa

Ms Victoria Tau – National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa

Ms Sibukele Gumbo – Walter Sisulu University

PROGRAMME & ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Prof Colin Thakur – Durban University of Technology

Prof Hossana Twinomurinzi – University of Johannesburg

Ms Nkosikhona Msweli – University of South Africa

Ms Victoria Tau – National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa

Ms Sibukele Gumbo – Walter Sisulu University

Keynote speakers

Coming up...

Publication

All research papers will be blind peer reviewed and will be published in proceedings that are DHET accredited with ISBN: 978-0-6397-0844-7 (print) and 978-0-6397-0845-4 (e-book). Further indexing in publication platforms will also be done.

CONFERENCE TO JOURNAL PAPER SUBMISSION CYCLE

The best research papers and case studies will be considered for publication in a DHET accredited journal (details to be communicated).

Venue

The conference is hosted by the Durban University of Technology, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. The specific venue will be communicated before the end of October 2022.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to mswelnt@unisa.ac.za or victoriat@nemisa.co.za