Building digital competence in professional education

In the next seven years, the Russian economy will have to switch to digital technology and digital product. The purpose of the article is to establish general recommendations to develop and implement digital competencies. The subject of the research is the set of necessary digital competencies and their ranking. To make it easier for people to adapt to the digital economy, the authors of the article conducted a survey among the chief executives of leading enterprises in Nizhnevartovsk to predict which digital competencies need to be taken into account in professional training. In addition, the research revealed additional features that a person should possess, e.g. the information consumption culture and decisiveness. The modern Russian professional education framework is setting a new educational paradigm for students and lifelong learning. This includes fundamental changes in the professional objectives of higher education. Therefore, the training must adapt to the new contextual requirements. The article provides reflections on building a profile of digital competencies for areas of higher education training that correspond to the current context and new scenario, including those that are a cross-cutting axis for other professional competencies that become relevant in the educational domain. Our research and analysis revealed areas for the further development of digital competencies, as well as three basic principles that are crucial for the successful design and advancement of new programmes in professional education. Standardized mass education in the field of digital economy is no longer relevant. Now taxonomy defines the skills that need to be included into the digital economy through a wide range of professions. This article provides a new insight into the role of competence transition from education to the labor market. To understand today’s demand for new skills and elaborate on how it might change over the next 5-10 years, we recruited employers to identify the competencies that they consider essential.