By Gollum, where IT is going now

By VIKKI BLAND

People who put their dreams, hopes and aspirations (not to mention sizeable students loans) into training for employment in the information technology industry will appreciate a little direction on just where the industry is going.

Why get into, or continue with, IT this year? Are some IT employment areas in decline? Are others growing? And how portable are IT skills anyway?

Felix Tan, head of school for the School of Computer and Information Sciences at Auckland University of Technology, says while the IT industry always seeks the skills it needs to meet the demands of the IT marketplace, that marketplace is changing.

"There has been a downturn in the numbers of students attracted to IT courses in the United States and Australia, largely because of the harsh job market and growing offshore outsourcing," says Tan.

IT outsourcing occurs when an organisation uses an external provider to support its IT operations and infrastructure, or parts of it.

The organisation is then free to concentrate on core business, but it will also employ fewer IT staff.

So how harsh is the IT job market in New Zealand?

According to last year's Statistics New Zealand Annual IT Survey, sales of information technology goods and services dropped by 1 per cent in last year to around $7 billion.

Statistics NZ attributes the decrease in part to communication hardware and cables sales dropping by more than a fifth.

However, while computer hardware and peripherals sales grew 4 per cent, total IT export sales (excluding communication services) were also down - by a whopping 30 per cent.

The culprits were again communication cables and hardware, along with computer services.

Of course, these are just statistics. Entrepreneurial types who use their IT skills to launch a business or export initiative may do well. And if they do, the Government will be applauding.

In 2002, the Government established the ICT Sector TaskForce to help the IT sector grow and retain a skilled workforce.

Among other goals, the task force advocated taking 100 New Zealand ICT (information and communications technology) companies to sales levels of $100 million by 2012.

To support such an ambitious target, the government launched a range of "leg-up" initiatives for the IT sector.

These included an ICT awareness campaign and funding for tertiary education pilot schemes (interestingly, an under-supply of appropriately educated graduates was identified by the task force as a significant restrainer of IT sector growth).

It also included an increase in funding for secondary school technology curriculums.

Although the Government is fanning the flames of New Zealand IT in the hope it will become an inferno, its initiatives will take time to be effective.

In the meantime, New Zealand IT end-users (the companies that use IT, rather than make it) continue to buy IT products and services and put them to good use.

This is borne out by the Statistics NZ survey. Last year IT sector sales to New Zealand end-users of IT rose 2 per cent, or by $92 million to $4367 million.

So are there are more IT job opportunities with IT end-users than there are with "pure IT" manufacturers, developers and marketers? Probably. According to education sources, increasing numbers of IT students are training in non-traditional IT areas in a bid to appeal to specific industries.

Examples include artificial intelligence, IT user-friendliness, human/computer interaction, and the business side of IT - e-commerce, IT strategy, IT management, change management, and knowledge management.

Opportunities also exist in supplying IT skills to the digital media market such as computer games, films - the Lord of the Rings trilogy being a clear illustration of IT melding with creativity - plus television and websites.

In biotechnology, information technologies that identify people through scanning their voices, faces and palms are being developed and marketed.

Tan says tertiary providers should not ignore the synergies that can be created by offering IT programmes that cross multiple disciplines.

"Ideally, we should be producing IT graduates who are as creatively competent as they are technically competent," he says.

He says IT skills frequently cut across industries other than IT and can be used in job areas such as fine arts and communications, or even agriculture.

In November last year, Minister for Agriculture Jim Sutton commented on a report commissioned by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise highlighting the use of information systems and technology to maintain food-chain safety. "[Overseas buyer] farm product purchasing decisions are increasingly made on the basis of concerns over animal welfare, disease resistance and food-chain safety.

"The seamless integration of electronics-based farm technologies ensures New Zealand farm products meet international standards and are fully traceable," said Sutton.

This means even without his wool, Shrek the sheep can be found, thanks to information technology.