ICT skills development centralised

By Christelle du Toit, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 29 Apr 2008

The presidential Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) says it has done enough work on the country's ICT skills challenge to hand it over to the Department of Communications (DOC).

The DOC, in turn, has welcomed the move, saying ICT skills development will subsequently receive even more focused attention.

DOC spokesman Richard Mantu says ICT skills development is so important that Jipsa decided it had to be centralised under the DOC.

"They [Jipsa and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA] are placing ICT skills at the top of the priority list," he says.

According to him, the department has the capacity and capabilities to focus on ICT skills, more so than a general skills initiative can afford.

"The DOC is the coal-face of ICT development in the country."

Deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka last week revealed the annual Jipsa report for 2007, followed by the annual report of its parent-project, Asgisa.

Under Asgisa, the country's skills shortage, including ICT skills, was identified as a binding constraint on the economy.

Jipsa was created to address this, and assisted in facilitating the establishment of an e-skills council, aimed at increasing the number of skilled ICT professionals in the country, as well as improving the quality of their skills.

This project was initiated by the Presidential International Advisory Council on Information Society and Development this year and falls under the jurisdiction of the DOC.

"ICT is an important part of Jipsa, together with business process outsourcing, but Jipsa no longer needs to be active in that area," Mlambo-Ngcuka said at the Jipsa launch. "The e-skills council will provide ICT training and can now take over from Jipsa."

"A working group has been established within the e-skills council, which will be getting down to the nitty-gritty of the issues," says Mantu.

Numbers game

One of the central role-players in the newly-established e-skills council is the Information Systems, Electronics and Telecommunications Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority (ISETT SETA), which has welcomed the latest move.

Oupa Mopaki, CEO of the ISETT SETA, says the DOC is perfectly positioned to manage the ICT skills drive, thanks to the e-skills council.

"With the establishment of the e-skills council, we are all speaking one language."

He explains that in the past, different departments would have different approaches to, and statistics on, the ICT skills shortage. This is now to be taken a step further by placing responsibility for top-level ICT skills development with the DOC, he says.

Mopaki hopes the e-skills council will be able to issue definitive statistics on the number of ICT skills needed across different economic sectors by the end of the year.

Department of Labour statistics peg the ICT skills shortage to be in the region of 38 000 people.