Aussie Comp Society President on skills shortage
By Techgoss Correspondent

Every tech professional is aware of the growing demand for skilled computing workers in USA, Europe and Australia.  The reasons are varied -  growing economies and computerization,  globalization, rising rupee and the inability of IT giants like India  to accept more major contracts due its own shortage of skilled computing staff.  And there was a time when it seemed that most computing jobs would be outsourced to tech behemoths like India due to their high quality and competitive costs.

Australia has felt this pain more than other countries.  Its economy is booming and booming.  And booming.  Unemployment is at a 30 year low.  Consequently, there is an increasing demand for computing professionals. Infosys, which has a 650 strong team in Australia, is recruiting using Aussie job websites.  Ditto with Satyam.  Australia’s premier computing organization, Australian Computer Society (ACS) recently commissioned a survey on the salaries and perks.  The results showed the upward trend.   The median base salary of all computer professionals as a group was $88,000 and the median total package $102,000.  The median base salary in the private sector was $92.000.  The average increase in salary in 2006-2007 was 4.5 %.    Indian migrants are stepping in to fill this gap.

ACS, Australia President Philip Argy spoke to techgoss about how his organization plans to deal with the skills shortage.

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Australian ICT professionals are experiencing positive salary results due to a combination of the industry’s solid growth performance over the past year and the continued demand for skilled ICT workers. The industry has experienced strong performance in the ICT service exports sector in particular, which increased to $2.701 billion in 2006 from $2.2 billion in 2005 and was highlighted in the 2007 Australian ICT Trade Update.
 
Globalization has had a significant impact on the resourcing and management of ICT projects in recent years. The declining supply of graduates due to falling enrolments and the ageing of the workforce are also contributing to the increase in demand for IT professionals. The challenge facing Australia is to identify and act on the reality that IT skill sets are going to be in insatiable demand for the foreseeable future and how to address the skill shortages.
 
As ICT underpins Australia's economic prosperity and growth, there is therefore a legitimate imperative to remove roadblocks to strategic ICT projects wherever there are skill shortages.  However, our view is that wherever feasible those skill shortages should be filled by domestic re-training, cross-training and up-skilling before resorting to immigration as a solution. In particular, we do not think Australia should be providing incentives for people to migrate here because of their skills unless we more strongly encourage those needing the skilled staff undertake the training of people locally to meet their needs. Existing staff have a wealth of organisational knowledge and “memory” that also adds value to their training.
 
Demand for Australian ICT professionals is being driven by multi-billion dollar Federal and State Government infrastructure projects and considerable private sector investment, as organisations aim to increase their security, service levels and international competitiveness.  As part of the 10 Year Strategic Vision for the Australian ICT sector, the ACS discussed the importance of innovation in ICT procurement policies. For the demand of ICT professionals to maintain and increase, Government R&D spending and policy should focus on commercialisation of technology through large, multidisciplinary commercial R and D and product realisation centres. Government procurement practices should be reconsidered to focus on providing reference sites to facilitate global market penetration and create more opportunities for Australian ICT professionals and businesses.
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