Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Better skills can save IT jobs from offshoring, says BCS

02 Dec 2004, 12:00 am

IT professionals looking to survive the growth in IT offshoring must embark on a programme of continual retraining in order to "upskill" and show that they meet internationally recognised qualifications, according to a new report by the British Computer Society.

The report, Offshoring: A challenge or opportunity for British IT professionals?, argues that despite predictions that at least 12% of current UK IT jobs could be lost to offshore IT outsourcing by 2010, the future for the British IT profession is far from bleak. The British IT sector is currently faced with skills shortages in growing areas such as systems integration, project management and security technologies, says the report. In addition, the increasing need for IT professionals to provide business analysis and added value in sectors such as financial services, the law, market research, architecture, engineering design and public services including the NHS, means that a more rounded skills profile will be key to the future competitiveness and market worth of many of today's UK IT professionals. The report, written by a BCS working party on offshoring, cites the low unemployment rate among UK IT professionals, less than 4%, as indicative of the current buoyant state of the IT profession. But the offshoring trend, developed on the back of improved telecommunications and inexpensive bandwidth, means that the IT profession cannot afford to be complacent. The working party's chair, Elizabeth Sparrow, is adamant that the fast evolving IT services market opens up real opportunities for British IT professionals to work in new industries and to provide services from the UK to world markets. However, she cautions, the profession needs to critically review its performance in comparison with the best in the world. Otherwise it risks overselling itself and underestimating the capacity of overseas workers to provide high quality, cost effective services. Failure to identify and understand its current competitive advantages means that IT professionals will lose out on new opportunities. In order to address a perception that overseas workers do not produce quality work, offshore suppliers are now investing heavily in achieving compliance with internationally recognised quality management standards such as the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), and this is setting the norm for the new global IT services market. According to BCS chief executive David Clarke:

"The challenge for British professionals now is to gear up for the rapid globalisation of the IT services industry that is well underway. Traditional IT skills such as software development have become globally ubiquitous and a narrow focus on technical skills and their application will not help tomorrow's professionals. But all too often, IT staff can underestimate their business knowledge and expertise too."

The solution, says Clarke, is to adopt a new career model, requiring lifelong learning, in which IT staff can develop their skills beyond a purely technical environment.