The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), through its Information and Communications Technology Literacy and Competency Bureau (ILCDB), has partnered with Microsoft Corporation for the conduct of a nationwide upskilling initiative to empower the workforce and government employees.

The skilling initiative, launched June 22, provides an educational portal wherein users can access relevant technology-related content to advance their ICT skills.

The learning portal is a free service that contains training modules on technology, management, and finance, among others.

It aims to reskill and upskill civil servants to allow them to pursue career advancement opportunities and also to enhance key public services.

“Through this undertaking, we hope to assist our public servants from various National Government Agencies (NGAs) acquire the proper knowledge and skillsets to flourish in the growing global digital economy,” DICT Secretary Gregorio “Gringo” B. Honasan II said.

“More importantly, we shall also align their talents and skills with the digital needs of the new normal so that they can better serve the people and our country,” he added.

The partnership was formalized through a memorandum of agreement (MOA) signed between the DICT and its technical partner Microsoft last December 2020.

The project can distribute the upskilling content via the learning portal to over 800,000 government employees for the duration of the program.

The initiative can also be scaled to support 10,000 online certifications as well as 1,000 cloud professional certifications until the end of this year 2021.