The government must offer training tax breaks to IT
professionals and employers, if the UK is to avoid a year 2000
style skills shortage by 2012, an influential industry body warned
last week.
The Institute for the Management of Information Systems said
that without a heavy investment in training, the UK will face
critical shortages of project and programme managers within six
years.
The shortfall threatens to derail major public and private
sector IT projects, as government departments vie with the private
sector for a limited pool of skilled staff, the IMIS skills trend
report published last week concludes.
“The private sector needs to recruit project and programme
managers, but there will be a godawful crisis in this area. If
companies want these skills they have to set about developing them
now,” said the reports author, Philip Virgo.
IMIS is calling for the government to kickstart training
programmes for the next generation of project and programme
managers, by offering employers tax and national insurance breaks
while their staff are on full time training courses.
E-skills UK, the sector skills council for IT, backed IMIS this
week with calls for more government support for training IT
professionals.
Karen Price, chief executive of E-skills UK, said she would
welcome government support for training IT professionals, either
through tax breaks or subsidised training.
“I think there needs to be incentives for individuals and
employers to support the acute shortages we see in the nation,” she
said.
The UK, which is at the bottom of the OECD league tables for
workforce qualifications, is alone in its failure to offer tax
incentives to employers to develop existing staff, according to
IMIS.
Without incentives, the UK faces an IT “skills crunch” by 2012,
as work on the Olympics, the ID card programme, the NHS, and
transitional government, soak up suppliers of skilled IT managers,
IMIS claims.
The UK could face “a digital winter of discontent during the run
up to the next general election,” said Virgo. Price said
universities were trying to plug some of the gaps but warned it
would be some years before the benefits filter out to industry.
“I think we have made really good traction in terms of working
with the education system to better prepare young people for the
skills that are needed today. But it will be some time before they
hit the market place,” she said.
“We are back in another growth cycle that will lead to an acute
skills shortage, but we have survived them in the past,” she
said.