Western Australia is facing a significant skills shortage in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, driven by an “image problem” for the industry and the increased use of ICT by mining companies, a computing conference has been told.
The Australian Computing Society (ACS) held its annual Western Australian branch conference, Securing the Future of ICT in WA, last week to focus on the main ICT issues facing the state.
ACS vice-president of community boards Jim Ellis said the ICT skills shortfall affected WA more than the rest of Australia.
Mr Ellis said the lack of interest from young people to enter the sector and the increasing demand for ICT staff as a result of the mining boom, were the main contributing factors to the skills shortage.
“The problem we have is that we can’t really interest students to come into this profession, because we have great trouble convincing them that this is an exciting career,” Mr Ellis said as part of a conference panel discussion.
“And we have now got to the situation where there are more vacancies for ICT staff in the resources sector than there are for engineers.”
With the increased development of remote operations centres and specialty resources software, Mr Ellis said ICT had become critical to the mining sector.
“Previously in the resources industry they didn’t really invest much in ICT because it wasn’t of prime importance, if the computers failed 10 years ago in a mining company it wouldn’t stop anything running,” Mr Ellis said.
“But now, ICT infrastructure is absolutely critical to these companies and they cannot operate without it and that, I think, is another reason that we have this huge skills shortage.”
Julian Clarke, ACS WA chair of the young IT committee, said more needed to be done to educate young people about the opportunities in the industry.
“Our industry has a bit of an image problem, we are either seen as being ultra-nerdy or being a bit old,” Mr Clarke said.
“I think we need to get that education in almost as young as primary school and lower level high school, so by the time they get through to choosing a degree they can say that ‘yes this is a viable career path for me’.”
It was also noted in the panel discussion that the quality of training needed to be improved.
Edith Cowan University chief information officer Garry Trinder suggested ICT courses be made shorter and more intensive to promote a constant stream of graduates each year.
“We take three years for people to get their degree and get into the business and, my view is, if you take the contact hours in an under-graduate degree it works out to six months full-time plus 11 weeks that make up the tutorials,” Mr Trinder said.
“We need to be more agile and we need to rethink this skills shortage, there is definitely a skills shortage and it is no good moaning about it, but taking three years to train people in my view is not the way to be agile and responsive.”
Mr Trinder said there were also issues of relevance associated with the three-year degree, because the industry was one that was changing constantly. “Universities have to change their views about structured degrees … if you take three years to train an IT person, what they’ve learnt in that first year is already out of date,” Mr Trinder said.
