A new government initiative aims to attract 40,000 more people
to the IT industry E-Skills UK aims to give small firms a voice in
Whitehall and boost number of IT staff.
The government cannot resist tinkering with education, particularly
when it comes to IT. There has been a succession of organisations,
from industry-led bodies to national training organisations, each
devoted to solving the UK's IT skills problems.
A glance through the back issues of Computer Weekly shows that the
problems faced by employers have not changed much despite years of
political fiddling. Skills shortages, an oversupply of graduates,
and a declining number of women entering the profession, still top
the agenda. But employers are optimistic that the creation of 23
sector skills councils, will make a real difference.
One of the first of the new councils, E-Skills UK, received its
approval from the government today (8 April). It will act as a
voice for every employer with IT, telecoms and contact centre
professionals in its workforce.
The organisation will receive £1m a year from the government for
the next three years, doubling its budget. Because it is guaranteed
funding, the money can be invested in projects that offer
longer-term benefits for employers. It expects to generate another
£4m a year from donations, membership fees and the supply of
training services to business.
Karen Price, chief executive of E-Skills UK, describes the creation
of the sector skills councils for IT as a significant "step
change". "It will mean that the employer's voice becomes embedded
in government policy and employers will have influence over the
direction of government, universities and education," she
said.
The priorities for the new body will be largely determined by three
advisory panels of employers representing IT suppliers, IT users
and telecoms firms. The user panel includes luminaries such as
Sinclair Stockman, group CIO at BT, Paul Coby, CIO at British
Airways, and Maggie Miller, business transformation director at
Sainsbury's. Each acts as a representative for their industry
sector rather than their firm, and will feed into the sector skills
council's views from a wide variety of industry groups.
Price plans to extend this influence further by creating groups of
employers who will feed back to E-Skills UK, either from regional
groups or from groups assembled on a project-by-project basis. "We
have many other companies involved apart from the boards," she
said.
Surprisingly, employers have shown little interest in identifying
and planning for the next big skills shortages. There is a feeling,
said Price, that it is more important to focus on the problems that
lie behind this apathy rather than tackling specific skills
gaps.
"The past has demonstrated that focusing on particular
technological skills is not the most effective way. There are lots
of just-in-time training schemes that will address shortages when
they happen. Much more important is the willingness and
availability of people to up-skill," Price said.
More fundamentally, E-Skills UK has recognised that, as more basic
programming work goes off-shore, IT professionals in the UK will
need to differentiate themselves by developing "added value"
business and management skills. This will mean new approaches to
training and a closer liaison between businesses, universities and
colleges to develop relevant courses.
"The idea is to work with intermediaries, whether that will be
employers, universities or further education; in fact, all the
stakeholders to press the skills agenda. We need to pick up the
employer baton and run with it," said Price.
One approach would be to replace the existing system of vocational
training with a new system based on courses and qualifications that
divide learning into bite-sized chunks. Professionals would be able
to learn the skills they need, when they need them, without
disrupting their day-to-day work. And they would be able to add all
their bite-sized courses together to obtain a recognised
qualification.
E-Skills UK is working with universities to develop a new IT
curriculum for undergraduates, where the new syllabus will be one
third technical, one third business and one third communications
skills. Price plans to pilot the syllabus with one or two
universities, and if it proves to be successful, to encourage its
adoption across the country.
Training business people to understand IT is equally important.
This will mean ensuring that any degree, from music to business
studies, contains an IT module. "It might be presented by a
visiting lecturer from industry for example, but the objective is
that all managers and leaders of the future will need to understand
the impact of technology on their business," said Price.
Small and medium-sized companies will be a priority in the work of
E-Skills UK. Each of the boards will have one representative from a
small company, but Price insists that every board member
understands the importance of up-skilling employees in smaller
firms, which account for 90% of the companies in the UK and employ
70% of the workforce.
She plans to work with the DTI's Small Business Service and to use
her influence with the UK's nine regional development agencies and
the regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales to encourage them to
invest resources in developing IT skills and expertise. Persuading
just one regional development agency to invest £3m in IT skills for
local firms could make a big difference.
In return for backing E-Skills UK, the government is expecting a
return from employers in both time and resources. "What is clear is
that those sectors that invest will reap better value from the
public purse," Price said. E-Skills UK hopes to win charitable
status so that employers can benefit from tax exemptions if they
make donations to its work.
To discover whether E-Skills UK is achieving its targets, Price is
arranging to survey thousands of school children's attitudes to IT,
from school age through to their first job. Their responses to the
initiatives, such as girls' computer clubs in schools and open days
at IT employers, will be gathered to assess the perceptions of IT
as a career.
"I am confident that these targets are achievable. A lot of thought
has gone into them," said Price. "The only question is whether they
will prove to be sufficiently stretching."
E-Skills' targets
E-Skills UK has set three main targets for the next three
years:
- To encourage 40,000 people who would normally not consider a
career in IT or telecoms to enter the profession
- To put 15,000 people through new employer-designed learning
courses at schools, colleges and universities
- To encourage 1,000 companies to increase their investment in IT
training.
Industry's view of E-Skills UK
Ford
Richard Thwaite, Director of IT, Ford
Europe
"We can't always make our voices heard, and the Ford voice is
quite small, so by bringing together a number of different
companies, E-Skills UK can have a more significant impact. The
reality is that Ford's IT needs are not very different to
Sainsbury's, BP's or British Airways'. It is the ability to
influence that is most important."
Sainsbury's
Maggie Miller, Business transformation
director and chief information officer
"One of the big strengths of E-Skills is the amount of
involvement from industry. There are people from the employers' and
the suppliers' side, such as Dell and IBM, who have allocated some
very influential senior people who all have a vested interest in
its success."
BT
Sinclair Stockman, Group chief information
officer
"If you look at the companies involved, such as IBM, EDS,
Barclays and the Inland Revenue, you have probably got some of the
heaviest-hitting CIOs in the country. The reason they are there is
that they really do believe this is an investment that will help
the UK economy. "