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Good practice Imported

GovTech Digital Skilling Program — Bhutan's National Push to Certify 400,000 Citizens by 2029

Bhutan · Thimphu · See the Bhutan profile · See the Thimphu profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 86% 48/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Bhutan's GovTech Agency runs a free 12-day national digital-skills course, prioritising unemployed citizens and workers aged 40-49, aiming to certify 400,000 people—about half the population—by 2029.

400,000 citizens
National training target (by 2029)
12 days
Free course length
GovTech Digital Skilling Program — Bhutan's National Push to Certify 400,000 Citizens by 2029

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Government Technology Agency (GovTech Agency), Royal Government of Bhutan
Period
2024-2029
Keywords
digital literacy, workforce upskilling, digital certification, public sector training

Context

Under Bhutan's 13th Five Year Plan, the Government Technology Agency (GovTech Agency) launched a nationwide Digital Skilling Program offering a free 12-day course in basic digital competencies, with successful participants earning the internationally recognised IC3 Foundation Digital Literacy Certification.

Activities

The programme deliberately prioritises two groups often left behind in digital-transition policy: unemployed citizens seeking new skills, and employed people aged 40-49 who did not grow up with digital tools.

Results

Bhutan's national newspaper Kuensel reported the agency's public target: training 400,000 Bhutanese in digital skills by 2029, a goal equivalent to roughly half the country's population of under 800,000.

Conclusions

The scheme is one strand of a broader GovTech push that also includes a national digital identity system and citizen-facing e-government apps, suggesting institutional durability, but no independently verified data on completion rates, certification pass rates, or post-training outcomes has been published.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Free to participants; programme cost not disclosed.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — 2024-2029 target period under the 13th Five Year Plan.
Staffing & skills
GovTech Agency trainers and administrators

Conditions for success

  • explicit targeting of groups often excluded from digital-transition policy (unemployed, mid-career adults)
  • an internationally recognised certification (IC3) giving credential value
  • institutional durability via a broader GovTech digital-identity and e-government push

Common failure modes

  • no independently verified completion, pass-rate or post-training outcome data published

Where it fits

Governance type
national government agency
Scale
national (target: half the population)
Income level
lower-middle income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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