Consulting house ForgeAhead`s fifth annual ICT in Government Summit will focus on demand for ICT skills in government and the need to improve service delivery ahead of 2010.
The event, to be staged at Sun City from 22 to 24 May, will highlight how the ICT skills shortage is undermining service delivery potential, says Adrian Schofield, head of research at ForgeAhead.
SA is seen as a potential breeding ground for high-quality ICT professionals, Schofield says, but government is still grossly under-skilled.
"This is due to a number of factors, such as a lack of coordination between the education system and labour markets, the fact that demand for IT professionals is outstripping supply and the availability of better opportunities in other countries."
Schofield says one of the most common finding of ForgeAhead`s ICT in Government programme is a lack of ICT skills is undermining service delivery potential.
"Government has identified this as an issue, but unless there is more collaboration between the public and private sector to develop and transfer skills, the problem will not go away," he says.
"As SA is at the dawn of one of its biggest challenges in the hosting of the Soccer World Cup in 2010, there is a lot of pressure on government to ramp up its activities around improved service delivery."
The IT in Government Summit will focus on identifying issues around the successful deployment of ICT solutions within government. "A key theme for this year`s summit is the need for ICT integration. In order for government to dramatically increase their service delivery to the citizen, there needs to be a lot more sharing of information and integration of systems," says Schofield.
"We also hope to use the summit as a platform to facilitate the development of a national ICT strategy."
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