UK is still plodding away at IT skills gap

A senior technology expert recently told me he believes government attempts to bridge the IT skills gap are rubbish.

Could it be that public sector officials have failed to take the development of technology expertise seriously enough? Or could it be that private sector IT leaders have failed to take heed of continued warnings?

A delve through the Computing archives highlights how we have been writing about the challenges posed by an impending skills gap for the best part of 20 years.

A 1989 National Computing Centre (NCC) working party, set up to look into the IT skills shortage, called for more ‘plodders’ to be employed, suggesting that many graduate-level recruits were over-qualified.

Seventeen years on and globalisation has more than addressed the plodder issue; basic programming is now being completed by technicians on the other side of the world.

But globalisation also risks further devaluing the technology profession – with more and more innovation and development taking place offshore, rather than at home.

As a result, increasing numbers of graduates swerve to avoid management-level IT jobs for fear of being pigeonholed in a career that offers limited career development.

Similar concerns were aired in 1989 – the same NCC survey concluded that business executives should recognise that a good IT manager could also be a candidate for management positions beyond the IT department.

That old chestnut: board-level representation for technology executives. Nearly two decades on and it is still a significant issue for IT directors who are struggling to deal with the intractable challenges of the skills gap.

Such developments led analyst Forrester Research to declare in 1995 that large companies would need two chief information officers (CIOs) if they were to get the best out of their systems – one to focus on technology infrastructure and the other to focus on skills development.

The researcher said many large firms could not make the most of their systems because they had neglected the soft issues – the skills gap, retraining and management.

Ten years on, how many companies have a skills development CIO? More to the point, how many organisations are still struggling with the joint concepts of introducing a CIO, rather than an IT director, and giving the technology leader representation on the board? Far too many.

UK private and public sector technology experts need to address the skills gap now. Globalisation means we will not have another 20 years to debate the issue.