IT must pull together to battle skills shortage: Gov CIO

The government's chief information officer has called for the IT profession to present a united front to combat a growing IT skills shortage.

John Suffolk said: "My belief is that any great business is underpinned by professionalism, and there is a decline in people going into the IT profession. The more we show people entering and leaving university just how fantastic the value created by technology is, the more people will want to come in."

The technology industry needs an influx of more than 150,000 people per annum, according to e-skills UK and Gartner. But while there is an increase in demand, the number of people with relevant skills is static or declining. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the number of computer science graduates in 2005/06 was just 34,005. And government statistics show only three out of 10 graduates with IT-related degrees go into the profession.

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Suffolk said it is difficult for businesses to find graduates with relevant skills, for example, in systems architecture. "Deep enterprise architects are hard to find, and there aren't many in the world," he said.

Mike Rodd, the British Computing Society (BCS) director of external relations, said IT is such a broad sector even computer science graduates may not have gained the right skills. "There's a growing number of people with the right degrees but the wrong skills for particular parts of the IT sector," he said.

Rodd said there needs to be "serious leadership from government, from the major tech players, and from bodies like [the BCS]", to put out a positive message about the IT industry and encourage people to enter the profession.

The BCS is involved in various projects to raise the profile of IT as a profession, including schools outreach projects, such as the University of Southampton National Cipher Challenge, which encouraged school children to crack codes.

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK