News
Issue No. 23 - June/Nuly 2005
Groups find common purpose in skills crisis
It seems every professional body in SA is tackling a skills problem of some kind, as industry groups that have long been training providers start getting vocal about future needs in their lines of work.
Industries like ICT and agriculture are touting the need to recruit young people to keep up the momentum of encouraging global growth.
The ICT Council for South Australia has brought together industrialists, educationalists and Government representatives to form a Skills & Workforce Action Group.
“Our long term goal is to ensure that South Australian industry has a supply of locally educated, highly skilled ICT staff committed to a career in this industry,” says Mr David Raffen, the Chair of the Information and Communications Technology Council.
“The only way to solve this dilemma is to collaborate so we can ensure that the output from the educational institutions will meet the needs of industry into the future.”
The move was a response to reports that enrolments in IT courses at the State’s three universities have fallen to an all-time low.
The ICT industry in South Australia has been growing in excess of 10% per annum over recent years and will continue to grow at least at that rate for the foreseeable future, Mr Raffen says.
“Industries from manufacturing through to film depend on IT as the enabler to cut costs and increase automation,” Mr Raffen says. It’s paradoxical that students are turning their backs on IT at the very time when the local industry is experiencing rapid growth.
“Lack of IT staff and IT innovators will reverberate across every other industry sector.”
HIA South Australian Services Manager Robert Harding, announcing the Housing Industry Association survey of projected labour needs, said the overall purpose was to identify how the construction industry was likely to develop and change, what jobs would be available and how best to structure entry level and career-pa...
