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Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel Post-16 Education
Witness: Digital Jersey
Friday, 15th March 2019
Panel:
Deputy R.J. Ward of St. Helier (Chairman) Deputy R.E. Huelin of St. Peter
Deputy T. Pointon of St. John
Witnesses:
Mr. T. Moretta, C.E.O. (Chief Executive Officer) of Digital Jersey Mr. J. Linder, Policy Manager for Digital Jersey
[15:28]
Deputy R.J. Ward of St. Helier (Chairman):
Just before we start there is an information sheet there about the nature of public hearings for your information. There is no one in here so it says: "Switch your mobile phone off", but it would be a great idea if you switch your mobile phones down or off before we start for the hearing. We should introduce ourselves. I am Deputy Robert Ward . I am the Chair of the panel.
Deputy R.E. Huelin of St. Peter : Deputy Rowland Huelin.
Deputy T. Pointon of St. John :
And Deputy Trevor Pointon of St. John .
Deputy R.J. Ward :
If you would quickly introduce ...
Tony Moretta, C.E.O. of Digital Jersey.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
James Linder, Policy Manager for Digital Jersey.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
This is part of the Post-16 Review that is being undertaken and a really integral part of that is to get as much information as we can and the public hearings are to just ... you may want to extend upon your submission that you made and we would like to thank you for that. It has been superb; the response we got from across the field. This is really helpful for us. So it is an opportunity to extend on that and so put some questions. So it is not too threatening in any shape or form. I would like to start with a general question and I am not quite sure how to ask the question so I will just go for it. It might be an impossible one. We talk about digital all the time but how do you define that world? What is it for the wider public so that we have got a sort of context that we are talking within because it is huge?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think it is a very good question and one of the issues is that no matter what job you do you need digital skills these days. A different report to the one we did on digital skills was the Strategic Review that McKinsey did recently for Jersey Finance. One of the interesting things that came out of that was that digital skills are just as important for the finance industry as they are for the digital sector. So you are right that digital is not only something you need to use in every walk of life these days but the other point is it changes and that is a challenge for education that what you are working with today in technology changes. So this is a problem that is facing traditional degree subjects in universities that you might start off a 3-year course ... and you might be starting off with materials that were developed 5 years ago ... by the time you finish that course it is 8 years old.
[15:30]
That is a long time in technology. I mean in terms of how we define digital James probably has something to add on that.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes. So we have got the Digital Skills Partnership and we have spent quite a long time working with them to narrow down what digital skills are. So we have already put it into 4 different areas; so that is development based skills, so that is kind of coding languages. Infrastructure and DevOps, so that is more like Cloud based information. Business intelligence and digital creative and content and
within all of those 4 areas you can kind of align them to different companies. So obviously every company, no matter what sector of the economy, will have people within those 4 areas. It is just where your focus is. So business intelligence is more like a C5 where they go in and they have got business analysts and project managers and C.R.M. (Customer Relationship Management) developers. Digital content and creative is more like digital strategy, graphic designers, web designers, A.P.P. (Advanced Placement Programme) developers. Software development is more like software writing and things and then infrastructure, which is again more like 3:31:06 (inaudible), what is happening, and then we spend some time narrowing down within those 4 areas where we expect job growth to be. So within them business intelligence is quite linear to the economy so that is dependent on servicing the local domestic economy which is very important because we need those skills. If the finance industry is equipped to improve its productivity you need to have those business analysts and project managers and so on, developers, going in and supporting them. Again, infrastructure because you are going to be holding data and making sure that your security is okay you need that and S.E.M.A. (self-encoded multiple access) coding but ultimately we expect more of the growth to be in the kind of the digital content creative because they are cost pressures. Some of the other jobs can either be done off-Island or people have had 3:31:45 (inaudible).
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
It is an interesting challenge though. So, as James said, one of the things we did when we developed the Digital Skills Strategy was look at what the requirements were of industry. So, what were companies looking for in terms of skills? So ideally if you can provide more of those people on- Island you are less reliant on immigration for those skills but if you just stick to that then you are potentially missing out on skills where people could create new businesses and new industries. So you have to strike a balance. It is very difficult for somewhere like Jersey to be a subject matter expert at everything in terms of the education system.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Okay. That really helps. Thank you. It does give us a context for the discussion.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
It might be worth in case we introduce our ... so when James refers to the Digital Skills Partnership that was a recommendation from the University of Exeter in our Digital Skills Strategy so everyone thinks about the Skills Academy which is one of the big recommendations. The Skills Partnership has been in place for about 6 months now and that was about bringing education and industry together. So we have people from the Education Department, from Skills Jersey; we have Highlands, we have some of the schools represented around that group. We have technology companies as well as Digital Jersey but we already have finance representatives as well. So we have one of the big banks there. We have Jersey Finance sitting around the table as well. So we
have been looking not only at the demands of the digital sector but also the demands of our largest industry; that is finance.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
So how effective is that? I will say this for a reason. How does the current Post-16 educational offer in Jersey support the needs of the local businesses? You said that. You put the mapping together but how effective is it in taking the classes for the 16 education and really moving it into industry or to further education?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Well, I mean there are 2 different sides to that so in terms of, as we said in our response, when Exeter has certainly looked at it is all the digital companies do find major problems. So I think we have just done some additional research, which we have only just got, which we are presenting next week with Tech Nation in the U.K. (United Kingdom) and they interviewed industry here and about 75 per cent of companies said they struggled to find people with the right skills here. Now, that is not a huge ...
The Deputy of St. Peter : Seventy five per cent?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Seventy five per cent of companies, when asked, said they struggled. Now, to be fair ...
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey: Said it was their biggest problem.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
... it was their biggest problem. It was their biggest challenge. Now, to be fair you could ask people in the U.K. if they struggled to find people with digital skills.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
I went to that presentation, did I not?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Yes, and so it is a struggle. Now, one of the interesting things that came out in the Exeter work ... and James might want to elaborate ... is you do have a problem that people will still recruit but they will recruit people that do not have the skills and that can damage the company. It can damage
productivity if they are recruiting people with suboptimal skills, and that was another finding, was it not?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes, I think that we are obviously talking about supply a lot of the time but obviously we need to make sure there is the right demand profile and at the moment ... what do they call it? ... below equilibrium. It is like a technical education plan whereby we are producing lots of people with below the right level of skill and they are being put in jobs which are slightly too advanced and then, as Tony was saying, that has an impact and then they start to off-shore jobs to Liverpool or wherever it might be and then on the flipside of that we need to make sure that when we do courses like the Leadership Programme we have got an improved programme. We make sure that that mismatch is not there and they are all jobs that they are optimum for and that they are filling. Then there is not skill surplus. If you look at regions across Europe you can see which ones have a skills surplus and which ones had a skills deficit. We would almost certainly fall in the deficit area but somewhere like Cornwall for instance has a skill surplus because they have lots of people at universities producing lots of good people at Exeter, around that area, but then they do not have the right jobs to go into after that.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I mean it is worth saying the wording that Exeter used in terms of provision of options here was barely sufficient at Key Stage 5 and that the number of digital courses available at Key Stage 4 were inadequate and inconsistent so we do have a mismatch. We do have jobs being created but we do not have people to fill them. The problem there is not just about being reliant on immigration but companies have started, ironically, off-shoring from Jersey, new jobs. It is fine in some ways having people working around the world. With the connectivity we have you can have a team of developers in Eastern Europe. One of the problems we have is you see some companies that start up in Jersey, they cannot recruit, they will recruit people in the U.K. What then happens is you reach a tipping point where they say: "Well, we might as well switch the company to the U.K. in terms of future growth because that is where we can be find people with those skills."
The Deputy of St. Peter :
So I think what you are saying is that the demand that you are seeing required is not being fulfilled through the Post-16 education system here.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey: No, not at the moment
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Okay. What do you see as the challenges? What is lacking and how does that need to be addressed? I give you free rein to just say what needs to be done.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey: So I think ...
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Look, I will take up ... I will just take up all the questions.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
So perhaps I will say something at my level which I think summarised the issue and I think we said that in the summary and then James might want to talk about the detail. So one of the problems here we have ... if you use the international definitions of a highly skilled workforce generally then we have an issue in Jersey and if you look at the last census we would be in the bottom 30 per cent of U.K. towns and cities. Now, the reason for that across the board is a few different reasons but firstly, we do not have a university. It goes deeper than the things people normally think about. We lose people to go to university. It is not just that they do not necessarily come back. I think only about half do. It is the fact that we do not attract people. So a typical university town in the U.K. they will lose lots of students because people want to leave home and we could have one of the best universities in the world in Jersey ... a lot of 18 year-olds, if they have been here for 18 years will want to get off the rock for the life experience side of it for a few years. Towns with a university also attract students that are new to that area who put down roots. So we do not have a university. We lose students. We do not gain them. We also do not have the widest range of roles here so people do not come back. If you get a degree in engineering in the U.K. you are probably not going to come back to Jersey because there are not going to be the opportunities. Also it has been very easy ... and in many ways good for the economy ... but very easy for school leavers to walk straight into a very well-paid job in the finance industry. The interesting challenge there is, are those roles going to be there in those numbers with the impact of automation? So we have a high level sort of skills deficit for a number of reasons that are completely understandable but it shows that we need to improve higher education options on-Island so that we do not lose as many people so that we can skill up the people that want to stay but I think longer term as well we might want to think of having educational establishments here that can attract students from off-Island. Do you want to add anything to that, James?
Deputy T. Pointon of St. John
We are hearing a lot about the deficits but what do you consider to be the positives, the good things, the things we are doing right and need to develop in terms of the educational system?
Okay. I will just quickly build on Tony's point. The only 2 things I am going to say on that is when we talked about the digital sector the economy is sort of changing in that. Before a lot of industries would cluster together, like the finance industry would cluster in Jersey and London and New York and elsewhere, and Detroit was always the motor city and things like that. But because of the digital sector and the jobs of the future require such high levels of skills companies are now being attracted by talent clusters. So the way to look at it is maybe 80 per cent of the jobs in Detroit were relatively low skilled and 20 per cent were really high skilled but that sort of flipped and now 80 per cent of jobs being created are really high skilled and only 20 per cent are low. So companies' expectations of that; they need people who are really highly skilled which is one of the problems of Jersey because if we have a relatively lower skilled population which they ... companies check this. I was on the phone to a blue chip ...
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Jersey has a relatively low skilled population?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Compared to elsewhere. I was on the phone to the H.R. (human resources) director of a major blue chip company yesterday and they were seeing whether or not they wanted to open a big campus in Jersey or somewhere else in terms of I.T. (Information Technology) and digital and they were using LinkedIn to see what level of skills there were here and in that case Jersey or Jersey/United Kingdom and they just looked at it in Jersey so the numbers are really low but they had United Kingdom and downloaded loads more people. So there is a challenge around that and then in terms of things that we are doing positively ... surprisingly when we did the Digital Skills Strategy we interviewed lots of companies from all the different parts of the economy and I had expected them to say they were recruiting their digital talent from traditional areas like from Hautlieu and Highlands and elsewhere and worryingly almost all of them said they were recruiting their top developing coders from the coding programme. So we seem to be the only channel for the industry going into their coding programme, a part time course that you run twice yearly which are 6 months long and we get about 30 graduates off it a year. There are obviously really good things going on and you do have a lot of people who are very skilled coming out of Highlands and are very good but I suppose because a lot of people go off to university and digital businesses tend to be smaller so do not have the scale to offer really good programmes for graduates returning and ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Let us talk about some of the initiatives. Before we get on to the things that we are recommending and we are going to be putting in place this year, it is fair to say some of the schools have risen to the challenge. So we have seen an increase in schools offering computer science as a G.C.S.E.
(General Certificate of Secondary Education) and an A Level. It case you do not know, and this was something I learned a few years ago, the academic side in terms of looking at G.C.S.E.s for example had moved away from programming and computer science over the years to teaching people how to use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and things like that but the I.C.T. (Information and Communications Technology) G.C.S.E. ... you probably know this, Rob ... was then seen as almost too easy. Then the U.K. ... and we followed here in Jersey ... moved from one extreme to the other. They moved to computer science which was quite difficult. You needed to be good at sciences. It had a lot of maths involved. That has put a lot of people off in terms of numbers. You have gone from a lot of people doing I.C.T. because it was easy but fewer people teaching computer science. I think we also had problems recruiting. I have to say we have seen some terrible experiences of schools trying to recruit good computer science teachers and retaining them. There are a number of schools who seem to recruit computer science teachers and lose them very quickly. Now, whether that is down to individual schools or whether that is down to the individuals, we do not know, but worth looking at. Some schools have been doing well so I think we have seen some of the schools increasing the numbers. It has been particularly good to see schools like J.C.G. (Jersey College for Girls) and Beaulieu pushing the number of girls going into computer science. Beaulieu launched its own Institute of Technology where interestingly enough they cleared out the ... I think it was the fiction section of the library ... because, what a surprise, the kids were not using it ... and equipped it out as a computer lab. Highlands are looking to launch a diploma in games development this year as well as I.C.T. There has also been a number of good initiatives. I was at an event with K.P.M.G. (Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler) this morning. They have been working with the University of Exeter for a digital degree apprenticeship and there should be a lot more of this. So what K.P.M.G. do is they will recruit a couple of students a year in Jersey. That student will do a part time degree ... it is 4 years rather than 3 years ... and they do some residential time at Exeter. They do one day a week doing distance learning courses and then 4 days a week working in K.P.M.G. What is interesting there is the student is being paid a salary. They have an employment contract for that period so they have certainty. The company pays two-thirds of the degree cost and the States, the Government of Jersey, pays the other third. I am not sure if you are aware in the U.K. they have brought in something called the Apprenticeship Levy and that is where companies above, I think, £3 million turnover had to put 5 per cent of their profits into this pot and interestingly enough what incentivised them to offer their own apprenticeship schemes is that they could take that money back out so they could net if off what they were investing.
[15:45]
It was really interesting to hear from the students themselves that they sort of get the best of both worlds. They get a degree at the end of it. They do not get the debt at the end of it from maintenance
and things like that but also they are getting real world experience at the same time and I think this is a shift that has been going on anyway.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Can I just ask a couple of things just to go back in terms of ... there are quite a few things that come from that. The skills gap itself. We went to a conference in the U.K. and one of the issues that was raised in the U.K. is the gap between the A Level standard and degree, that space in the middle, that used to be the sort of H. & D. (hardware and devices) sort of level. There is a huge gap there for companies. So it is not all about degree but there is that space there. Are we seeing that space there, is one question, here because I cannot think of where the provision for that would be at all on the Island? I just cannot think where ...
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Highlands does an I.T. for business foundation. That is Level 5, so that space between A Levels and degree because A Level is a Level 3 and a degree is Level 6. So that is Level 5 and the Highlands diploma will be Level 5 too.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
So there is a provision here at Highlands. It is a very specific one, is it not?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes, I.T. or computing and I suppose we run the part time courses like digital marketing and coding and those ones for which they are not accredited but they would fall into that space in-between A Levels and ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
It is interesting. I am assuming the event you were talking about was looking generally at education.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
It was looking at Post-16 education.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Yes. I was at an event in Westminster last year and it was talking about FinTech and start-ups and people were complaining ... it was like being in Jersey, people were complaining about a lack of skills, problems with immigration, visas, things like that. I felt at home. What they said that was interesting, particularly in digital skills, the business world is moving a lot more quickly than the academic world so people are complaining and students are starting to complain that they come out of university after 3 years with a degree with a lot of debt but without the skills they need to get a job
and they are then told by employers: "You need to go away to do a 3-month, 6-month boot camp and pay again another £10,000 to get that relevant experience." One of the things we are looking at with the Digital Skills Academy here on-Island, this is not going to be about a traditional degree. You have to do it more rapidly. You have to have a changing syllabus that takes account of changes in demands for industry. It is interesting that the sort of traditional degree course of 3 years ... well, let us face it, most degrees are not fulltime. In reality it might be 8 hours a week. That is changing. I think it is partly changing in the U.K. because students are becoming intelligent buyers. They are saying: "If I am giving you £9,000 a year I want value for that £9,000 a year. I would rather pay you for 2 years and pack it all into 2 years for the same amount of doing it over 3 years." So one of the things we need be careful about is for digital skills in particular ... it might be different from English, literature, history, French ... that syllabus is changing more quickly than the traditional academic processes can cope with.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
This is going back again but it has just occurred to me again because you mentioned the Digital Skills Academy. I have spoken to them and I know that their course is based around using Google Classroom and using that sort of online access and collaborative access.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Are you talking about the Beaulieu Institute?
Deputy R.J. Ward : Yes.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
So that is the Beaulieu Institute of Technology. So I was talking about the Digital Skills Academy that we are going to launch in September.
Deputy R.J. Ward : Sorry. I meant ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey: Yes. It is all right.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Do you think that perhaps by chance that the education I.T. system has become an obstacle to some schools developing its I.T., i.e the use of Google Classroom?
So when you say "the IT system" you are saying the way the Government ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
I mean the way they access, yes.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Yes, I would say absolutely. I found it quite shocking personally that you get very frustrated teachers. I find it quite odd that we put gigabit fibre into schools in Jersey. So we had some schools that were the first in Europe to have fibre and yet they are held back because all of the I.T. systems are controlled by the centre and they are not controlled well from what I have seen. I know there are plans to address that. I think by not having the resources in the schools to handle it and give the school ... by all means make the schools go through particular tests to make sure that they are capable of running the systems. I had a personal experience that my son was sitting his G.C.S.E. I.C.T. practical and both of his practicals had problems. He was put off his very first ones because the systems were not working and they cannot fix it in the school. They have to pick up the phone to somebody in the Education Department. I think one of the other things which is a bit harder perhaps for the Education Department to solve is the systems are so closed down to avoid any issues maybe with pupils understandably looking at inappropriate content and that is one of the reasons why I believe Google Classroom was not allowed initially because the servers were in the U.S. (United States). This is not personal data. The reality is most of those pupils are walking around with 4G mobile phones and tablets where they can access anything. So, yes, it does seem to be, I think, the I.T. departments in schools are having one hand tied behind their back. So it is interesting that the school that has made the most advances is Beaulieu, which is one of the few schools that is not under the Education Department I.T. controls.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Do you think that might be true beyond ... well, it would be true at all levels, Post-16 as well?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I do not know how it works in Highlands to be honest. I am only getting that feedback from schools. I do think that will change with the new focus on I.T. within Government. I think that will change once the new resources are brought in but, yes, I have had this feedback from a lot of people running I.T. in schools that they feel held back.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Coming back to your Exeter University K.P.M.G. experience. This seems to be very interesting. Can you just do a little bit more now? This is relevant. What is the degree course that they are
doing for the benefit of K.P.M.G.? What is it? What is the content of that particular course and what do they get at the end of it?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
So what I heard this morning ... James might know a bit more detail ... so this was somebody from Exeter presenting this morning at K.P.M.G. and hearing it from the students' mouths, which was fascinating. So K.P.M.G., although a traditional finance firm, they have their own digital team that work in consultancy. Nowadays when you are doing audits of companies you have to look at their password policies, their cyber security, things like that, and so they need more digital skills. They cannot find as many people locally to do it. There are a lot of people going traditionally from school wanting to pursue a degree in accountancy and working for firms here but they get people who are keen on the digital side. They get them, for the majority of time, but they are also getting the benefit of increasing their skills by going away to Exeter in this case for some of the time but also doing distance learning.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
What skills are K.P.M.G. looking at for young people?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
So the digital degree apprenticeship, which they are looking at particularly with Exeter ... I think Exeter have got about 5 or 6 different areas ... some of it is coding, some of it is cyber security skills, some of it is understanding new technologies like V.O.C. (volatile organic compounds) chain and how that can be applied in business. James, do you want to add anything to that on the K.P.M.G. Exeter course?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes, there are more B.C.S. (British Computer Society) based qualifications or British Computer Science based qualifications. There might be a bit of business analysis in that and project management and those sorts of skills. I think it is I.T. and business solutions I think that ...
The Deputy of St. Peter :
They are post A Level not post degree.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey: Yes, post A Level so ...
The Deputy of St. Peter : Okay and ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
So they will get a full degree after the 4 years.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
What I am trying to get is, what is the profile of their A Levels or whatever they need in order to qualify?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
It is interesting with Exeter because one of the challenges K.P.M.G. I think had was recruiting enough people is ... Exeter University was saying today even though it is their degree apprenticeship scheme because the level of A Levels that people get to go into degree apprenticeship is included in their performance stats they are still looking at A.s and B.s to do that. So there is a barrier there by going on to that university but interestingly enough when we launched our degree equivalent courses in Jersey we will have a degree apprenticeship stage of that as well. The way we are doing it is people can go into that without having to score, say, an A Level to enter the programme.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes. When we were doing the criteria for the digital leadership programme it was much more around ... we will be doing interviews with them. We will ask them to do a few practical projects like PitchPlus and things like that because particularly in the digital sector you get a lot of people who perhaps have not performed as well in school and might not have the grades because obviously it is grade based so it is exam based so you are kind of cramming but they might be incredibly creative or they might have developed their own path in their spare time or something like that and you want to harness that energy and ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Sorry, so this would be a degree access that is less academically held back?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey: I think so.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
You are talking at the age of 18 now so during that 16 to 18 period what would those students have done or would the apprenticeship start at 16?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
The Digital Leadership Programme is double 3:55:04 (inaudible) so it is higher education. There is no timetable to going on ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
But it might be worth saying that the Digital Skills Partnership has also been looking at shaping the curriculum in the schools below 18. So again there is no point teaching things at 18 if you have not got a pipeline of people coming in with those skills.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Exactly. Are PwC ( Price waterhouseCoopers) and the others; are they doing similar initiatives? Are there enough of industry over here who are looking to recruit what will ultimately be degree double graduates within their own programme?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I would say not enough. I found it very interesting with K.P.M.G. this morning wondering why is that not pushed more and I think to an extent when it was begun I think the Education Department were trialling this in terms of funding part of the degree and this was before student financing had come in. I do think it would be good in terms of Post-18 if more companies were aware of this but, as I said, one of the interesting downsides of it is that you are restricted by the academic qualifications needed to get into the university that is offering it. As James said, a lot of people that want to go into technology careers are not necessarily people who have done well in the school system but they can still have fantastic careers in technology.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
That is why I think I was trying to step back a little bit from the degree level so what is the solution at Post-16 because we have a shortage of skills? If you are going to develop them on-Island it has got to be from the age of 11 and I know a lot is working there. So when they get to 16 if they are not "academically", in inverted commas, they did not get their numbers for their G.C.S.E.s or whatever but they are skilled for the digital sector. What provision do you think there is now?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey: So that is a Level 3, A Level ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
As a Level 3 course, yes.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey: Obviously Highlands runs the B-Tech Level 3 ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
But they have an entry requirement, do they not?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes, they do but you can do the Level 2 beforehand so a lot of their pipeline of people who perhaps did not get the right grades at their G.C.S.E.s at whatever school they are at then they will go to Highlands and do ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
That is their progression qualification, is it not?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes. Well, Level 2 is equivalent of G.C.S.E. then they will do their G.C.S.E. Level 2, which I think takes a year, and then they will move on to Level 3, which is their A Level equivalent and then obviously Hautlieu runs a number of courses. One of the problems we are having is that digital skills is often considered alongside like history and science and we almost need it to be seen alongside numeracy and English because it is the basis that underpins the learning of all subjects, which does mean the skills that come into the digital sector do not just come from the people who are doing I.T. and computing but also media and it is also business studies and increasingly business studies because, if you like, that one of the management consultancies is business 3:58:01 (inaudible).
Deputy R.J. Ward :
One of the reasons I ask is that what they are doing at Beaulieu I know it really does not have an entry qualification for that. Would you like to see that extended elsewhere for that sort of notion of; there is a pathway which is needed by the Island, needed by a sector, in any one of the 4 areas of the sector, which I have quite a clear understanding of, where can that happen? Where should that be? Why is not happening? I suppose the question is, why is it only happening in one isolated place? That is what I am trying to get at.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
What, because they have an entry requirement into Level 3?
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Yes, Level 3. Do you think we need to be more creative as an Island and increase access?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Yes. So I think Highlands is doing a great job, as we said. I mean interestingly enough Highlands' challenge, they have said to us, is getting people from doing the B-Tech to go and do the Level 5 qualification, and that is one of the reasons that we are giving Highlands space within the Digital Skills Academy we are building in Grenville Street so that those students can be taught there because at the moment they are literally being taught in a Portacabin in the carpark. Now, that is nothing for students for aspire to and so you want to not only get people to go to B-Techs but say: "Well, this is what you can go in after that." I think obviously within some of the traditional schools they are following G.C.S.E.s and A Levels. They are doing things like computer science but they are not for everyone. From memory what Beaulieu are trying to do is offer the facilities they have not just to students in Beaulieu. So the idea is for students that are coming out of other schools that have not got the result they can then go into Hautlieu and I think Education is supporting that, are they not, James?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes, and on that point, and correct me if I am wrong, in the U.K. compulsory education is up until 18 so ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Yes. We have had that point made to us today. That is a very interesting point.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I have to say, I mean that is one of the things on a personal level that I found quite shocking in Jersey; that the school leaving age I think is a challenge.
[16:00]
From memory I think the U.K. interestingly moved from 16 to 18 in 2 stages I think, did they not? They did it to 17 initially which sort of forced children to try out further education and then they moved it to 18.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
That is because I think the drop-out rate was quite low at 17. There was no point dropping out halfway through a course and you had already captured the student so it was a nice way to ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
But it meant that if somebody ... if it really was not for them ... they were not forced to carry on and they could go into the jobs market. I think again what I found interesting with Beaulieu is they obviously saw an opportunity of creating a different pathway and that is one of the things that we have been discussing in the Digital Skills Partnership is you have to provide that pathway. You made a very good point. If you are going to offer courses at 18 how do you make sure that enough people have enough options to get what they need to start that course at 18.
Deputy R.J. Ward :(?) 4:00:45
Sorry, I do not know where we are in the questioning, Tony, do you ...
The Deputy of St. Peter :(?) 4:00:47
Okay, so we talked about K.P.M.G. taking kids into Exeter University, a very good university obviously with high academic standards. Then how do we get to a situation where ... I know you talk about the Digital Academy et cetera ... we have a sort of a tiered level where not only the talent of the child but the interest, the digital interest of the child, is matched to the options elsewhere? That is part 1. Part 2 is ... now, I remember saying at one of the digital briefings with Mr. Walker and I was being sort of a bit noisy at the back of the class and I was playing devil's advocate, okay, and you know that is what I was doing. Why would you want to go and do digital here when the cool stuff is done in Shoreditch, San Francisco ... you name it ... everywhere else? That is where the real talent is. When we came away ... not parliamentary languages ... he worked out is we have got to make it sexy. So the question is to follow up; how do we sell all of that to the schools, to the parents, to the Island that there is a phenomenally exciting career in digital?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think you mentioned parents there. That is key. So it was interesting about a year or so ago before the Skills Show ... not the last one, the year before ... somebody said to us: "In Jersey you have to get to the parents." I think there is not a problem with the kids. I mean we gave you some stats to show the huge percentage at the last Skills Show of kids coming up to our stand who were interested in jobs in the digital sector. One of the problems in Jersey I think is that children understandably are influenced by parents and the parents perhaps understandably want their kids to have the careers that they had in banking, in accountancy, in law, and I can understand that. They are good careers; good jobs; good salaries. I think one of the challenges is, those jobs might not be there in those numbers in the future and if you look at all the studies into artificial intelligence, into automation and you look at the chances of somebody's career being disrupted by technology the area in which that chance of disruption is highest is in financial services. It is in accountancy and audit and things like that. So you are right, you have got to get to the parents ... and we can leave copies here. We created last year ... we have done 2 now ... digital careers brochures. So not the skills strategy, careers, and what that goes to is not only what is available locally but you can see as you go through it it is case studies of individuals and the jobs they do, talking about it and young people. So it is really to try and show that in Jersey as well as other places there are some really interesting well- paid jobs and if you look at the differential between the finance industry and digital in terms of
average salaries they are very close. So that is one side of it. I think your point about other opportunities elsewhere, the reality is a lot of children here are not going to get the opportunity or the money to go off to Silicon Valley for 6 months or 12 months. However, I think if they get the opportunity to get the digital skills at an early age, if they can find interesting jobs here, they then have the opportunity ... if you look at J.T. (Jersey Telecom) two-thirds of J.T.'s business is off-Island. They have staff working in the U.K. on things. They have projects around the world. There are groups here like Shore(?) 4:04:35 that have organisations around the world. You have groups like C5 now owned by B.D.O. (Binder Dijker Otte) which works with companies around the world. So I think it is about giving them the foundational skills here, piquing their interest for them to go away and work on other projects but also to bring companies here to run projects which give them the opportunities. I had a good example recently, we have got quite a little cluster of virtual reality design companies now here in Jersey and I know some people, young people, who have gone away to San Jose to developer conferences and they get offered jobs and fortunately for us in many ways they say: "I would rather run it in Jersey." With the connectivity we have here, which people still do not appreciate, we have something in our fibre network nowhere else in the world has. Even our average internet speed is second only to Singapore in the world. So a lot of companies can run projects here and collaborate with people all around the world as well. I think you are right, it is very difficult for Jersey to compete with Silicon Valley but it does not mean we cannot start to build those skills.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
What we are trying to get to is the core, from what you are saying, is we have a restriction in the education. The infrastructure in the education outside of Beaulieu is not acceptable for promoting digital development within those schools. We have a cultural challenge where a lot of parents and families are not pushing them out the door: "You go into digital, you do what I did", like that. We know that there is going to be a huge change in that thinking. The majority of jobs that sit behind a desk in Jersey will go within the next 10 years. That is a given. How do we shake that up? How do we waken that one up? How do we change that culture? Does it start with the schools? Does it start with the parents? I know it is a vicious circle.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think it has got to run through everything. I think it is the schools. It is the parents. We are not particularly a digital society. We are very old-fashioned as a society in many ways and I think that will frustrate a lot of young people who are used to using mobile A.P.P.s and things like that. At least now we do not have to use paycards. We have an alternative to that for parking. So we need a more digital society. One of your colleagues in the Assembly said to me recently before they went on to promote the use of Jèrriais: "That we need a modernisation agenda for Jersey", and I think that is key as well because it is a lot harder to build a digital industry if you do not have a digital society and we are mixed. We have world-leading internet speeds but, as I keep saying, you cannot do your tax return online. You can only buy a house on a Friday afternoon. That changes. I think one of the other things, just to finish off the question, so to pique people's interest we have a lot of skilled people here from around world. We have high-net-worths and others. We are starting to launch a mentorship scheme. So initially that is about start-ups and people want to do it, who can they get advice from here in Jersey and elsewhere? What we then look to do is extend it to students when they have got some of those qualifications to again, what are the contacts they can build around the world to give them opportunities? You have to build up from the bottom.
The Deputy of St. John :
You have a close association with the other jurisdictions. Of those different jurisdictions where would you take the model to translate it into Jersey's digital society?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
It is an interesting one. I mean I think you have probably had people say to you before that in many ways it is a problem that Jersey just ... sometimes perhaps blindly ... copies the U.K. educational system and generally the U.K. has been falling behind because it is following the U.S. system. I can understand why; culturally we bring teachers over. We want to get children into universities in the U.K. It is completely understandable. If you look at other countries like Estonia ... that I have visited a few times and talk about ... they have a much more digital society. They have got a number of universities. Interestingly enough they teach their degrees in English in computer science so I do not see why we could not send people off there as well as to France and places like that. What is interesting is in terms of the model the top countries for education generally are in Scandinavia. I think Estonia is about third. Finland is number one. They are all around there because the U.K. is now below. So it has always struck me that one of the advantages Jersey should have in theory is we can adopt best practice from anywhere around the world. You will see in what we have looked at in our Digital Skills Strategy; we have looked at what is happening in the U.K. We have looked at what is happening in the U.S. We have looked at what is happening in France and there are lots of good examples and typically those examples are not through the traditional university system. They are in sort of boot camps, the 3-month intensive courses. They are evening classes. They are apprenticeships, are they not, James?
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Yes. The 3 examples I would maybe give is Luxembourg has got quite a good model because of their similarities in our economies and they have something called ... I think it is the Digital Bridge and that is effectively, how do we reskill the middle skilled people into digital areas. It seems more a sort of very proactive model but going back to Tony's point around having the importance of a digital society; about 20 to 30 years ago Sweden used to subsidise people to get computers so most people's first computer was subsidised and today Sweden has more £1 billion digital businesses than anywhere outside of Silicon Valley so there is a bit of ... the importance of that.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
One of the things that comes up again and again when we talk about education and I am very aware of the Scandinavian education system. I have been saying for many years we should be looking at those as are anybody who knows about education to be quite frank but there is a huge investment there which we are not putting in. Do you have any concept of the level of investment that will be needed which will be a leap of faith because we have got to make that investment and recognise that it will pay dividends in the long term?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think there is are number of levels there. We have done very well giving the best to the Government in running retraining courses. So we run courses typically aimed at older people but people coming from the hospitality sector retraining for digital careers, doing the Digital Jersey Coding Programme. That is not charged. We get funding from Government to run that. We do not charge students for that. We run 2 of these a year because they are 6-monthly evenings class courses. We are on about the 7th or 8th at the moment. We regularly get 60 to 80 applicants for each course. We can only take 16 places. So one of the reasons for having a Digital Skills Academy is to expand that and quite often ... James makes a good point ... a lot of the people coming into that course they cannot afford a laptop and we will provide a laptop for them for that course. So that is an area where investment is going in. We have got funding from Government for the Skills Academy. That was approved at the end of last year for this year and to launch it. That is to fit-out a physical space but also to pay for the development of courses and teaching of that as well. I think you made a good point about schools. I think schools have had money spent on the technology. They have not had the teaching resources. They have not had the support. So I know of schools that have had for years less than they need in terms of technicians to help operate the equipment there and that is even before you get to the issue you talked about, about people in the centre in education controlling what the schools do down to individual P.C.s (personal computers) and log-ins and things like that. That sort of goes against in many ways how digital and technology should work.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
One of my concerns is that the steps forward in digital teaching ...put it that way ... have been in schools where there is more access to those sorts of resources, i.e., and let us not beat around the bush, the private schools where perhaps parents have ...
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think you will be surprised. I think some of the private schools have, and some of the private schools have not done a good job of keeping their ... so I have seen a number of private schools who have spent a lot of time and effort recruiting good I.C.T. people from the U.K. and they have lost them through a combination of that school not prioritising technology above other things in resources. So I know one example where a school, I am told by somebody in there, took away resources from a technician so they could put that into a marketing role for the school, for example, or into other traditional areas. I have also seen examples where good people coming in have been frustrated by an over the top control from the centre, and they leave, because good technology teachers are in high demand all over the world. There is no point in recruiting them if you cannot retain them. There are all of these things that are mixed up, so I think one of the challenges is; how do you prioritise? We all know if any of you stood up as politicians in Jersey and said: "We have to make computer science a compulsory G.C.S.E. (General Certificate of Secondary Education)." You know there would be letters to the J.E.P. (Jersey Evening Post) saying: "Why not French? Why not music?" I think one of the challenges around this is how do you prioritise a minimum level of teaching at the very least in digital skills, because even if you are going to be an accountant or a lawyer or a banker you need those digital skills to perform.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
There is one thing, because what I was getting at partly as well, is when you put together the things you say in terms of sometimes it can be those who are less academically-minded who are really quite talented in this area if those students, who perhaps are more in the States schools, which I think is probably the case, there is a barrier to that success because of the lack of skilled teaching that they can access. They cannot get it because of a system that has been "held with one hand tied behind your back" is a very good description, I believe, because of the lack of resources. They will not be able to afford a laptop to take in, and if they did they cannot access the system anyway because they are not allowed to. Do you think that might be a barrier and, to be quite frank, a waste of talent? We are just wasting talent.
[16:15]
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think it is a waste of talent and I think that goes into investment in education full stop. We have seen a lot of pupils who struggle through the school system. It is no coincidence. We sometimes joke about a lot of technology people are somewhere on the spectrum, but that is serious. People are attracted to that and if somebody is not supported through the schools by the wider resources in the schools they are not going to get to a point where they are helped and nurtured into a career that is better for them as well. I think that is absolutely a challenge here, is how do you put the resources in across the piece to support the children to find the right career pathway.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
On that, it is quite important to have connectivity within the industry and students. There are some staggering statistics out there, like full interactions with someone from industry makes someone 5 times less likely to be unemployed when they leave school, so where we can work in that area that is kind of strengthen that area that is good. We have got a teacher that we are working with from Hautlieu at the moment to put them into industry for 3 or 4 days to shadow industry, so to reverse the model, so the student will then have a teacher so they can reapply what they are learning in the workplace to the curriculum at school so there are ways that you kind of bring those 2 together and hopefully through that industry will have the opportunity to meet and spot potential students that they can work with.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
I should have asked this right at the beginning; Digital Jersey is funded by the States?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
We get about 80 per cent of our funding from the States. We get about 20 per cent through membership, because we have industry association as well and that is for our core funding. We are able to bid for additional funding for things like the Skills Academy, for example.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Okay, I think it is important to know that as well.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey: I think that is important.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
We can make an impact there, you see.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
We are getting funding from Government that is useful, but we will also bring in industry, so the coding programme is taught by mentors in industry. It is interesting that Jersey Coders was set up and is now run by Digital Jersey, which is where secondary school kids are taught every Wednesday night by mentors. That was set up because there was not enough coding taught in schools, particularly some of the schools we are talking about. The demand is huge. We have got a Youth Hackathon this weekend. We have had these hackathons before. There are kids with some amazing ideas but you are right, sometimes we struggle to get the schools to support them, and we struggle to get the schools to get the information out to them. There is sometimes a barrier within the system between the kids and their enthusiasm and getting them through to the other end with those skills and into jobs in the industry.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Do you think that is because the curriculum that is established is too proscribed?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think possibly that is one of the reasons.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Can we just think out of the box here? We have got Post-16, which is supposed to be the idea of this, so let us stick to Post-16 and there are 5 or 6 organisations out there. I am not going to undermine any of them because they are listening and I am not saying they are floundering but they are not maximising on the opportunities in isolation. Why do we not just take it away and give it to a separate school under the boundaries of Digital Jersey that does all the digital training, exams and everything else? These kids could walk down quite easily and it is all in quite close proximity, so we get a concentrated hub in one particular area and leave the other schools to do the more traditional academic or B-Techs, or whatever.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think some of that we are doing already, so things like the Beaulieu Institute idea, what we are doing at the Skills Academy. I think the risk of doing that is that the kids that are academic still need digital skills. I think what you are talking about is the specialism and that is what we are doing ...
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Do it as a 4th A Level, something like that, and the bright kids can do that.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
I think what you are talking about there is something that has become a theme from this review of collaboration and the way that some very real barriers in terms of the structure of the school in terms of how you access the school and whether you pay for it or not, for example, and other barriers that are perhaps more false, and I am being diplomatic when I say that, that that level of collaboration is not happening as much as it should and it is showing in this digital sector. You need that because it is so all-encompassing and so varied.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
We do have strong collaboration, so looking at the Digital Skills Partnership we have strong collaboration between the Education Department and Skills Jersey and Highlands and a few of the schools there. One of the things we do find difficult, and to be honest, I have been working with the Education Department who are very helpful, we have been invited to the next meeting of all the secondary school heads. When we do go out to schools and we go out to their careers people quite frankly their response is sometimes pathetic. We do not get many responses. They do not show an interest. Whether that is because they just do not have the time to take people out of the schools, with the curriculum and the design, they do not have the resources to take them out of the schools, I do not know, but that can be a challenging collaboration. I think we have got a good relationship with the Education Department through the Skills Partnership. Industry is there as well, but we have got to make sure that works throughout the whole system. That again is about resourcing the system properly and giving them the freedom to do what they need to do as well.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
A culture shift. You have to break the mould.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
That is a good point. Overall it is interesting when you look at the economy, and one of the points I meant to raise before but I forgot, a couple of years ago it really struck me that the Chief Economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland presented to a Chamber of Commerce lunch and he put a graph up showing the productivity problems in Jersey, and the decline in productivity. He said that you can cope with that for a bit, because if you start from a good base that is okay. I asked him: "How do you solve it?" and he said the only way you can arrest that decline is to invest in 2 things, technology and education. I think that the challenge, and I appreciate it is a particular political challenge in a small place like Jersey, is how do you prioritise those things over other things? It is not easy to prioritise here, but the reality is there is no downside to prioritising those areas. As I said, agriculture needs to be a better user of technology, hence some of the things we are doing, because how do they cope with problems of resourcing? Tourism as well, finance. How do you become more productive and competitive with better use of technology? How do you take paper out of the system? You need skills and you need to invest in the technology for those people with the skills to use it.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
You can pay contactless on the bus but it costs you more than paying in cash, which is insane.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey: Yes, I did try on that one.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Can we finish and can I ask for 3 wishes again? I have asked everybody, if there were 3 things, 3 wishes. I do not like 3 ... we always say between 3 and 5, so let us have 3 ... 3 wishes that if you could fulfil, what would they be?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Do we have 3 each, or do we have to share?
Deputy R.J. Ward :
You have got to share, I am afraid.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
We have got to share. You go first, James.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
Okay. Well, in terms of driving demand up to post-secondary education ...
Deputy R.J. Ward :
Try to keep it within the boundaries of Post-16, if you can.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
One thing I would say while he is thinking of something, I think we need a university level institution here, either by investing in developing Highlands or something new, not an all-round undergraduate university, that will specialise in finance, digital, some of the things that really work for Jersey, but only if we also invest in the facilities to bring students here. That is the halls of residence, bring people in, advertise and have the licensing around it so that they can work while they are here. That is something else we have been doing. It is a university level education but attracting young people with skills, bring them here and they will put down roots. That is one of my wishes.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey:
I would say for higher level education, so Level 6, one of the benefits of operating in a university town is applied research and that is why you get those higher value jobs and higher value companies operating there, so we do get to a point with the Digital Skills company or Highlands or whatever it is that we are offering programmes. Applied research is really important if we are going to have an export-focused digital industry, which is a real pillar to the economy because you do need ...
The Deputy of St. Peter : What do you mean by that?
So universities operate in either a theory research or applied research, so applied research is a term of working with industry to develop new products and services. So on the digital leadership programme we are developing half of that programme ... they are working on live industry projects ... so as part of that focus they will be working on almost R. and D.-based (Research and Development) projects.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
That can be quite varied, so for example building a new hospital and applying technology into the treatment of people, that could be a piece of applied research. Any sort of medical research could work that way.
Policy Manager for Digital Jersey: Yes, it would have an impact.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Also I would say it is such a priority that we need a ring-fenced budget within the education system. We already have got the funding for the Skills Academy and we would like to expand that more over the years, and ring-fenced within the schools so they cannot take it away from digital and technology and put it somewhere else. Demonstrating that that money is going to teaching resource, going to technology if they needed it, going to attracting students and building it in there. As I said, if we do not prioritise this far more than we are doing now it is going to cause us problems in years to come.
The Deputy of St. Peter :
Can I ask one further question? I mentioned before how do you break the culture cycle that we are in that at that 16 years old in order to desire ... you are quite right. My daughter is in technology. I wonder why? Because I have promoted it and I have pushed it. How do we break that cultural mould?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
I think some of it is happening anyway. It depends how ruthless you want to be. If you want to be really ruthless and if you wanted to look at the skills we are having here, if there were changes to student financing you would incentivise people and say: "If you go and do a course in the following areas and you come back we will pay your fees, we will pay your maintenance, we will bring you back". So you can be quite ruthless like that and say: "We are going to prioritise the degrees and the skills we need and prioritise people coming back with those skills" as opposed to letting people do whatever they want, if you wanted to be that ruthless. Again, this is it. When people talk about the models around the world they talk about places like Singapore as an example. What people do
not get is that is exactly the sort of thing that Singapore would do. People talking about the technology model in Singapore, they do not think about ... so for example I did not know until recently Singapore has amazing maternity benefits if you have a degree. If you do not have a degree you do not get anything, because they are focusing on the skilled people ...
The Deputy of St. John : Really?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Yes, absolutely and these are the things that people do not realise. Good luck getting something like that through as politicians in Jersey. I am not saying we should, but it is that ruthless prioritisation. Again, it depends how ruthless you want to be. I think children are doing it already. I think it is about offering more opportunities locally. It is again making it clear that this is an industry that people see as being a priority. What I find is going to be interesting, a bit of a preview for you here, we have got Tech Nation who are a U.K. body funded by the U.K. Government that have produced for a number of years a Tech Nation report that talks about all the areas of the U.K. and the digital economy, strengths of industry and things like that. They have done a report on Jersey looking at the economy. When we look at the economy in Jersey you do not see digital as a standalone sector because of the way Statistics Jersey has been reporting. We are hoping that will change this year. You do not see the fact that there are already over 3,000 people working in the digital sector. That is not including people working in finance or government and technology roles. You do not see the fact that the information that is coming up from Tech Nation is that the G.V.A. (Gross Value Added) of the standalone digital sector is roughly equal to the G.V.A. of tourism, but I bet you all know people who would stand up in the States Assembly and talk about the 3 pillars of our economy as being finance, tourism and agriculture, whereas digital is up there with tourism, probably joint equal right now with tourism but it will grow. I think that is a bit more about a digital society. If people start to think: "We have a digital industry here. We have good jobs" as we try to show with some of the things that we do, that helps to provide that culture. One of the things that could start from the top politically is that education. That is why we have invited States Assembly Members to the Tech Nation briefing next week, because they are going to come up with that. I think you would have had an email. It probably went into your spam folder, Roland.
The Deputy of St. John : Is that on the 19th?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey: Yes.
That unfortunately clashes with a briefing we are getting from the States Employment Board. You will not get any States Members there at all.
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Okay. We did go through the Greffier of the States but I think there is an issue at the moment that we are not allowed to send emails directly through. We will publish this report that will talk about that. Again I think the culture is about we need to start realising that in Jersey we have that digital sector.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
The other thing I would suggest is why do you not come and do a briefing for States Members on that?
C.E.O. of Digital Jersey:
Yes, we do them sometimes and I think you came along to the last one, Roland, but I think as somebody said to us we have to do it here on a Tuesday lunchtime and provide sandwiches.
Deputy R.J. Ward :
No, you really do not want to do it on a Tuesday lunchtime. That is probably the worst time to do it because if there is a sitting on because there is a lot going on, so another time I think would be good. I would recommend that. I am conscious of time. Is there anything else? Like a good ex-teacher we are smack bang on an hour for the annual lesson. Thanks very much for your time. It has been a really good conversation and we appreciate all the input that we have got. There is an awful lot to look at with this, but we hope that we can produce something that will have some sort of impact at the end. Thank you very much.
[16:30]