Paul Brislen: IT sector in dire need of rescue

COMMENT

New Zealand's IT industry is facing a looming crisis that cannot be avoided. It can certainly be addressed, but this will take a concerted effort right across the board, and even that won't be able to make any impact for the next three years or so.

I'm talking about the skills shortage that has always plagued the sector but which is about to get worse. Much, much worse.

Entrants into IT-related university courses this year are at a 15-year low.

Think about that for a moment - 15 years ago, in 1989, the IT sector was quite a different place. Forget the internet, forget the dotcom bubble, forget broadband, forget serious desktop processing power. Think dot matrix printers, think mainframes, think green screens.

The world of IT then was an exclusive club with a high entry price. I'm not just talking about the cost of processing power, which was steep, but also the ease of use we take for granted today.

Fifteen years ago I couldn't have imagined my parents having a PC in their home, but today they have desktops, laptops and a home network to manage them all.

It's hard to remember quite what the IT world was like in 1989 because so few of us were involved in it.

Today there are few jobs or households that don't interact with the IT world in one form or another.

So why are enrolments down? It's a perception problem, I think. After the 1999 rush to fix the millennium bug and the nastiness that was the dotcom bubble bursting, IT is seen by many to be dead in the water.

This is simply not the case but try telling that to those coming through the system.

Sure, there aren't those El Dorado stories of two guys working in a garage building companies that are such overnight successes that they are sold off to rich foreigners for a fortune. But that's a good thing.

Those companies were a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon that weren't worth the paper their IPOs were written on.

Much better to look at companies such as Marshal Software or Navman, both sold for millions of dollars after many years of hard work. They are sustainable companies with good products that fill their market niches.

If we're to continue being innovative, and we need to, then we must have more graduates and post-graduates studying at the higher end of the IT spectrum.

That's simply not happening and New Zealand will suffer unless something's done now.

Demand for IT staff worldwide is growing constantly, yet even in Australia IT graduate numbers are down around 15 per cent on last year.

That's good for those who are graduating - they'll be able to charge a premium for their services - and bad news for New Zealand businesses, because traditionally IT staff can earn a lot more money overseas.

Fortunately the universities aren't taking this lying down. They're already concerned about the problem and a number of leading computer science department heads have put their names to a submission on the matter sent to the Government's digital strategy working group. We can only hope the Government acts swiftly on this.

For the best part of a decade successive New Zealand governments stuck firmly to the mantra that the Government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners. I think we've seen the results of that policy - a lack of winners in many areas - so now's the time to change it.

We have to say "this way lies the future, let's do what we can to make sure we lead the way there". If we don't, we risk being left behind.

For several years now we've been talking about the knowledge economy without any real sign of progress.

The Government has said IT and biotech are two of the sectors it wants to see more from and apparently there are great plans afoot to deliver, but without the staff to run these companies and to build these products, it will be for naught.

Once again education has shown itself to be the way forward. Isn't it time we overhauled the whole system to not only encourage but expect our children to become educated? The time to act is now.

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