Expert perspective: Building digital literacy in provincial civil services across CLMV

Background

As CLMV governments invest in digital skills training for civil servants, a recurring concern among practitioners is whether skills gained during short training courses are retained and applied in daily work once the training ends.

This piece draws on the author's involvement in reviewing several provincial digital literacy programmes to share observations relevant to programme design across the region.

Methods

The analysis draws on programme monitoring reports and informal interviews with training coordinators involved in provincial digital literacy initiatives over the past two training cycles.

Observations focus on differences between programmes that included post-training follow-up support and those that ended with the training session itself.

Key findings

Programmes that included structured follow-up, such as periodic check-ins or peer support groups among trained staff, showed noticeably higher rates of sustained tool usage months after training.

Where training was a one-off event without follow-up, staff frequently reverted to previous manual processes within a few months, citing lack of confidence and limited technical support.

Policy recommendations

The author recommends that digital literacy programmes for civil servants build in structured follow-up support as a standard component, rather than treating training as a single event.

It also suggests that CLMV countries share experience on follow-up support models, since this appears to be a more decisive factor for success than the initial training content itself.