By Bupesh Jain, 11 September 2007 14:44
NEWS
Europe is losing out on billions in investment because of a shortfall in qualified tech staff.
The European Commission is warning that 40 per cent of European citizens suffer from "digital illiteracy" and the skills shortage is slowing down the implementation of new projects.
European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media Viviane Reding said that it is no longer possible to waste the talents of millions of Europeans by leaving them out of the information society.
"Shortfalls of qualified ICT practitioners slow down new ICT applications in the economy and draw away billions of euros of investment funds to dynamic emerging economies, where hundreds of thousands of new engineers are qualifying each year," she said in a statement.
The Commission has called upon member states to tackle the deepening digital skills crisis, and will supporting a number of initiatives, launching its e-Inclusion initiative in 2008 which aims to halve digital illiteracy by 2010 by promoting better use of e-learning.
Comments
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1. IT
Not surprised at all. What student, in their right mind, would plan for a career in IT, when all they've heard of is IT jobs being off-shored?!
2. Les Blunden
I would suggest that there is no Skills shortage, I have been trying to find a position but I'm allways "Binned" due to my age (52), if companies employed people for thier skills rather than dismiss then due to age we would not have a shortage!
3. Karen Challinor
*sigh* here we go again, more arguements for offshoring on the way
1 - stop looking for exact matches and be prepared to train your staff
2 - be prepared to hire university leavers and teach them the interpersonal skills you think they are missing
3 - start hiring back the older people who have the skills you want but you think are set in their ways, you will be surprised
4 - start treating staff as valuable resources to be invested in and nurtured rather than throwaway cost centres to be disposed of as soon as you've lurched out of your current crisis, you will lurch into another one eventually and you'll need them again
5 - put people who know IT in charge of them
6 - pay them a decent salary and if they work overtime have a system in place to reward the effort, not everyone wants to give up weekends and evenings to meet a deadline imposed by some numpty in sales and a reward shows such effort is appreciated
4. Haydn Rees
This is strategic. Politicians need to prioritise what they want.
Do they, for example, want the force multiplier effect of these enabling technologies and presumably the opportunity cost of trade, savings in the cost of production, etc.
Or do they want tax from IT professionals more. I'm not suggesting a special Geek's tax rate, but governments only have the fairly crude tool of taxation to influence markets.
They have to allow people to accumulate wealth by going into IT to attract talent. This includes, for example, allowing the write-off of high end training against tax.
HMG has tax from Financial Services, and is fat and happy with that. They could have all the geeks they can handle by allowing people to get paid for the value they produce, but they won't do anything until the Financial Services Industry starts to falter from lack of geeks.
Unfortunately there is a lead time to geekiness, and they are reactive.
5. Richard
Lack of ICT experts; or "digital illiteracy"?
This topic is often confused because different people mean different things;
This brief report is also confusing:
Is the main concern about the level of "digital illiteracy" in the general (working) population; or is it over the claimed shortage of highly skilled ICT staff?
The distinction is important: Different policies are required to solve the different problems.
6. Paul Dixon
Well a good start would be to stop callng them techies (or geeks) and start sshowing respect for technical knowledge.
7. Simon
How about this for a novel approach - allow people to claim tax relief for relevant training/cerrer development ?
At the moment, if I pay for my own training, the government take a 100% tax markup compared to what it would cost my employer to provide the same training. Yes, I really do mean 100% ! Work it out from the 'sticker price' excluding VAT - then add the vat, income tax, national insurance, and the employers national insurance. For every pound paid to the training provider, the government gets another pound !
I think that is as immoral as charging people to go to university when (by the governments own admission) graduates will (mostly) earn more and so pay more later in taxes. The arguments in favour of charging for university education apply just as well to A-level - then why stop there, why not charge for secondary schooling, or junior schooling, ...
8. Haydn Rees
A Geek flame? How very quaintly 20th century of you.
"Geek" used here as conceptual shorthand, and as a high end Autonomy Technical Analyst (recently started a contract at Philips GIS - woo woo!), I use it of myself because Autonomy Technical Analyst is a mouthful.
"Geek": technocrat, who knows or finds out, for money.
"Nerd": enthusiast, who is learning to find out, or suspects, but must do so unpaid.
The distinction is a fine one and the synonymy may cause confusion. From me, "geek" is a title of honour.
I am indifferent to what you think.
9. Roger Huffadine
SHOUTING - THERE IS NO SKILS SHORTAGE only a cadre of ignorant employers who fear older techies might know more than them. I saw it in middle managers in our company [I was a Technical Director] there folk were afraid of employing knowledgeable people because they feared for their job and their career path. I tried many times to explain the difference between managers and techies but mainly in vain. This was in an company where programmers were paid more than the manager of the software department because I refused to ruin good programmers by promoting them into management jobs.
10. Matt Horwell
I'd like to know where all these jobs are! I've been looking to move into a better IT job for ages, but I can't find anything! I've got 14 years experience in IT, 7 of which in development. I'm a Professional Member of the BCS, but that doesn't create jobs for me to walk into! Is this Skills shortage being generated by the so called helpful Recruitment Agencies or just lack on realistic expectation from the Businesses??
11. Arunn Ramadoss, Micro Focus
The possibility of this impending skills crisis to become reality is slowly gripping every IT dependent organisation throughout the industry. This is a particular cause of concern in the organisations that still heavily rely on their legacy systems.
Vast amounts of information belonging to some of Europe’s largest companies lie within legacy systems, dominated by COBOL applications. But over the past few years various surveys and reports have revealed a disturbing decline in the numbers of professionals geared with the skills to understand and develop such applications, especially among the young graduates. At the same time, the baby boomer population with the skills edges closer to retirement.
Global organisations have, over the past twenty years, spent thousands of man hours carefully and strategically planning their information systems and their succession. Planning for the skills transition however has taken a back seat. If immediate steps are not taken to ensure a smooth transition of the precious knowledge and skills that are necessary to maintain and develop their lifeline systems, these organisations are going to be at a complete loss.
Initiatives such as e-Inclusion represents a good first step towards aligning the Europe’s IT workforce with the demands of present and future. Specific steps designed to provide skills such as COBOL programming and legacy development and modernization are more urgent in nature. It is vital for the IT industry to work closely with government, vendors and academia to ensure the evolution of appropriate skill sets to quench the skills demands of the future.
12. Karen Challinor
hands up everyone over 45 who can program in Cobol, Fortran or the assembly code of at least three different processors
...so that would be pretty much all of us then
now same question everybody under 45
...hmmm not so good
now employers with legacy systems, which group do you hire from again ?