Kathy Gibson reports – The ICT skills gaps is real: employers, sector education and training authorities (SETAs) and recruiters all confirm that they are unable to get the skills they need.
This is the word from Adrian Schofield, consultant at the Institute of IT Professionals of South Africa (IITPSA), presenting the results of the tenth edition of the IT Skills Survey.
The survey was conducted among both employers and employees, discovering how skills are acquired, what skills are needed, and where the gaps are..
One of the issues at hand, Schofield says, is that we have a disconnect in how skills are described. “Employers love to have titles, regardless of whether they reflect the job done.
“However, core skills tend to evolve a lot more slowly than the buzzwords, so a lot of the underlying competence is centred on foundational skills that move quite slowly.”
It is also hard to quantify the size of the skills gap. Schofield says that in South Africa, it is measure in the thousands. This reflects a percentage of the approximately 500 000 employed in the sector.
Globally, however, the skills gap is much bigger.
The real skills revolution will take place with ICT users, Schofield says. “Most people will need to understand the way in which technology applies to their jobs, to realise the maximum benefit.
“We can’t measure this in numbers because there are no job titles for how people use technology in their regular jobs.
“The gap here is going to be measured in the millions – potentially multi-millions. If we don’t bring people up to where they can take advantage of the technology the gap will get wider.”
The subtle difference is in jobs versus skills, Schofield points out.
While the SETAs list job titles that are required, the IT Skills Survey talks about specific skills, such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), DevOps, programming, change management, dig data design and analytics, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and data science.
Education is key to filling the gaps, Schofield points out.
“I have been beating the education drum for years, and until we start to change the way we educate young people, we will have to continue the fight.
“Our whole education system needs much, much more attention in terms of curriculum, teaching and the teachers who pass on the knowledge.
“We have a flat pyramid where 1,2-million children go into the school systems and 12 y ears later, a quarter of them leave with come kind of certificate, and of those only 5% will emerge with a tertiary qualification that will allow them to get a job.”
As long as young people have a foundation in technology they will almost certainly get jobs, he adds – without technology they often battle.
Training in the workplace is another vital element. “Whether the industry bodies are doing enough to promote career development, it needs to be a shared responsibility.”
Schofield points out that practitioners in South Africa are multi-0skilled and multi-tasking, performing in an average of six areas of competence.
Labor in South Africa tends to be mobile, with in-country movement, immigration and emigration having a big effect on the skills pool.
“I want to point out that you cannot fill gaps with grandiose plans,” Schofield points out.
There have been some big numbers thrown out by politicians that are completely unattainable, he adds. “Rather have plans that work.”
To manage the issue, we have to fix the education system , with greater emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects; and ensuring that the people we are beginning into this highly complex world have the aptitude to do it.
“Over 12 years there has been a persistent thread that we need to fix the education system so that young people can enter this world and become economically viable,” Schofield says.
An interesting aside, he adds, is that the Van Zyl and Pritchard aptitude test still works, and we should aim for more widespread use of this and similar tools.
Practical learning cannot be underestimated either, Schofield says, and is a good way of learning skills.
A better focus on gender equality will also help to start plugging the skills gap. The average ICT practitioner is still a man in his early-30s, lives in Gauteng, is highly qualified, has more than five years’ experience, but has only been with his current employer for three years, in a management of development role.
Reskilling can be used effectively to create the new skills needed, Schofield adds.
Employers in the survey recognise that reskilling of their employees is needed. Vendors are urged to identify the competencies that will be replaced, and help the practitioners who want to learn new skills.
It is important for all stakeholders to recognise that skilling is an investment, with dividends that pay out in the future, Schofield stresses. Employers cannot expect all employees to be work-ready, but must be prepared to skill them up once employed.
“We need to make sure that the way in which investment in skills development is because we recognise it is an investment for the future, not a palliative for the past. Unfortunately, there is no holistic approach to this vital set of competencies in South Africa.”
Emeritus Professor Barry Dwolatsky, director of the JCSE at Wits University, believes the world is facing a conundrum in terms of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR): we are unable to define it properly and thus to address it effectively.
The definitions bandied around tend to fall into three groups, he says. The first would list a range of technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and more.
The second group looks at these technologies as they appear in and impact our businesses.
The third group looks back over history in terms of the first three industrial revolutions, and enabled by the associated technologies.
“However, none of these is really a definition,” Prof Dwolastky says. “In fact, I believe the 4IR hasn’t really happened yet.”
Having said that, he is firmly of the belief that things are changing now – but no-one is really able to say what it is.
Back in 2011, Industrie 4.0 was defined as the convergence of interconnection, decentralised decisions, digital assistants and information transparency.
In fact, Prof Dwolatsky believes that the ongoing progression of digital transformation is more relevant to organisations today, with new technologies coming to the fore as they are developed.
“We are not seeing many companies doing revolutionary digital transformation,” he says. “We are probably not expecting to see any signs yet of 4IR in the revolutionary sense.”