The Government has been urged to give its backing to a scheme that
promises to radically simplify the way that employers and
universities assess the IT skills of their staff and students
Bill GoodwinThe Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), aims to
create the IT profession's first industry-wide definition of the
skills needed by IT employers at every level in an
organisation.
The framework promises to allow organisations to find the right
skills they have in-house and could help provide a detailed
analysis of the UK's IT skills shortage. It will end years of
confusion for employers that, until now, have had no easy way of
matching employees' job titles and qualifications with their actual
IT skills.
The Government's Central IT Unit (Citu) has urged all government
departments and agencies to take up the framework as a way of
ensuring that they have the right skills to manage IT projects.
It forms part of a concerted effort, outlined in a Cabinet
Office report earlier this month, to avoid the problems that have
dogged recent government IT projects such as those at the Passport
Office and the Post Office.
SFIA will enable government departments and private sector
employees to identify precisely what IT skills their organisations
have, what additional skills need to be brought in and what
training existing IT staff need.
Citu is also urging the Government to incorporate SFIA into its
own statistics to provide a nationwide picture of what IT skills
are in short supply. This could be used by universities and
employers to prioritise training needs.
The Post Office, one of several organisations piloting the
framework, said that SFIA will help it to make sure it has people
with the right skills. "The Post Office is an IT user and it wants
to be an informed IT user. It wants to be able to go to suppliers
and make sure the supplier has the right kind of skills," said John
Coffey, a Post Office consultant.
SFIA will also allow the Post Office to use its existing IT
skills more efficiently. In the past, managers have hired IT
consultants, unaware that the Post Office already had the skills
needed in-house, said Coffey.
EDS and IBM have also piloted the new framework.
Salford's apprentice plan