Published last week, the Imis skills trend report
concluded that the shortfall threatens to derail major IT projects,
as government departments vie with the private sector for a limited
pool of skilled staff.
"The private sector needs to recruit project and programme
managers, but there will be an awful crisis in this area. If
companies want these skills they have to set about developing them
now," said the report's author, Imis strategic adviser Philip
Virgo.
Imis is calling for the government to kick-start 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, said she would welcome
government support, either through tax breaks or subsidised
training.
"I think there need 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, said Imis.
Without incentives, the UK faces an IT "skills crunch" by 2012,
as work on the Olympics, the government's ID card programme, the
NHS IT modernisation and transformational government plans soak up
supplies of skilled IT managers, Imis warned.
"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 for the benefits to 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
added.