What can be done to improve Australia’s IT skills shortage?

The reality of the IT skills shortage is being realised by vendors, distributors and resellers across Australia. There have been difficulties in attracting talented people into IT, and further complications in keeping them in the field.

Australia already has a disperse population and many students are finding a future career in IT unappealing. This has caused a skills gap which needs to be filled.

Earlier this month the Australian Government unveiled it is contributing an extra $4.8 million over two years to NICTA, Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence, which will enable retention of a team of world-class researchers in Australia.

Senator Helen Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and deputy leader of the Government in the Senate said that the Australian Government would provide extra funding to NICTA to enable the organisation to hire researchers with world-class skills in silicon chip design.

Professor Aruna Seneviratne, acting chief executive officer at NICTA, said: “Through this team, Australia has developed a core competency in silicon chip design which is leading edge and contributed to Australia’s ICT capability.”

The extra funding from the Australian Government means NICTA will be able to offer new employment to these researchers. They will be working on wireless-related research within NICTA’s Embedded Systems research theme – research which is developing next generation wireless networks.

Dr Chris Nicol, chief technology officer of Embedded Systems at NICTA, said: “NICTA identified an opportunity to merge the LSI Australia-Agere team with an existing research effort to create state-of-the-art personal broadband wireless chips which will enable people to transfer large multi-media files, such as entire movies, 1000 times faster than currently possible.”

The addition of the researchers to the Millimetre Wave Gigabit Wireless Project team will allow NICTA to fast-track research on the technology. NICTA envisages that the increased effort afforded by the LSI team could mean that research from the project would be ready for commercialisation in two years.

Government funding for the NICTA is a step in the right direction, but what can be done to improve Australia’s IT skills shortage?

Brian Brannigan
Managing director of reseller Agreon:

We are victims of our own success as an industry. The issue is a simple one of supply and demand. We have created a perfect storm on the demand side of the equation with broad recognition that effective IT is delivering competitive advantage and regulatory compliance across all sectors.

On the supply side, during “Dot Bomb”, our industry acquired a stigma that we’re yet to shake. No longer a career, it became a job. Parents discouraged our brightest students, preferring traditional careers such as law, medicine, accounting and business studies. The move to outsourcing compounded this with a populist belief that Australian companies would be competing with an infinite supply of talent from Bangalore willing to work for peanuts. Consequently, our entry-level roles were moved offshore. So what can be done about it now?

To address Australia’s short-term needs, 457 visas are being exploited by a stream of certified, but mostly inexperienced, overseas developers. According to the ABS, our education system is producing more IT graduates than ever before. As an industry, surely we can promote the benefits of a career in IT over accounting, yet there is no shortage of talent toiling toward CPA. The geek image needs to go. Females excel in our industry, yet there are so few – why? Family-friendly working arrangements are very feasible.

We’re in great shape because our adolescent industry is delivering innovation and differentiation every hour of every day, fuelling a booming economy, the envy of the world. Yes, we’re experiencing growing pains but as always, we’re pushing ahead with increasing pace and fervour.

Alan Hansell
Advisor at analyst IBRS:

Media focus on the shortage of IT professionals has typically been on the supply side. Commentators have rightly highlighted the decline in numbers of enrolments in tertiary institutions in computing science, accounting and engineering and canvassed solutions.

What has been overlooked however is the demand side which is, what has to be done to help existing IT professionals and managers work fewer hours and get better results? Intuitively the answer is to give them better workplace tools such as collaboration technologies and social networking, but I believe this is a cop out.

More important is helping IT professionals and managers gain the soft skills needed to work effectively in teams and engage stakeholders.
Potential strategies to help grow soft skills to improve productivity:

• Picking the right people for the right projects or tasks, eg if extensive client involvement is needed, use people with high social skills.

• Managers becoming ‘fog busters’ and helping staff resolve environmental ambiguity or organisational politics.

• Arranging coaching or mentoring for new managers so they can move quickly from a structured to an unstructured environment without losing their way.

• Training in principled negotiating techniques to minimise conflicts and get win/win outcomes with peers and suppliers; selling good ideas to peers and stakeholders so they get adopted first time at meetings; and business relationship management with suppliers so the organisation consistently gets value for money.