Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to page 84 of the Government's Civil Society Strategy published in August 2018, what steps his Department has taken to work through the Digital Skills Partnership to help civil society organisations to build their skills, boosting collaboration between the government, civil society, and business to tackle the digital skills gap.

Through the Digital Skills Partnership, my department is helping civil society organisations to build their skills. Since publishing the Civil Society Strategy, the Office for Civil Society established the Charity Digital Skills Partnership for this purpose. The group consists of wide ranging organisations, such as Tech Trust, CAST (Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology), and Lloyds Banking Group amongst others. The group meets quarterly and helped to design the Digital Leadership Fund, launched in November, which is investing up to £1m into upskilling civil society leaders so they can confidently embed digital into their organisations.