Shortage in Australia?

Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 1:10 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

The Australian Information and Industry Association (AIIA) is a member
of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA).
WITSA is the worldwide organization run by Harris Miller of the ITAA.
As you can see from the following article, the fabrication of IT
shortage stories is being orchestrated worldwide. To find out more
about the WITSA go to http://www.witsa.org/.

Harris Miller's band will be playing in Austin, Texas in 2006. Go to
http://www.austinxl.com/article.php?sid=2061 to find out more about the
gala WITSA event.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/15/1023864366686.html

IT skills: a shortage or a scam?
By Graeme Philipson
June 18 2002

Is there a shortage of IT skills in Australia? Many people in
government and the IT industry would have us think so, but only because
it suits them. There is a great deal of misinformation about the
subject, not all of it deliberate.

It has reached the stage where it is regarded by most as self-evident
that we need more people skilled in IT. But if you look closer at the
issue, it is not at all self-evident. Indeed, many believe, with some
justification, that there is no IT skills gap and that those who speak
of it have an ulterior motive for doing so.

There are many people with IT skills who are unable to find work in the
IT industry, and there are even more who would like to work in the IT
industry, and have the ability and aptitude, but not the experience.

There is certainly an IT skills gap, but it seems to be a gap of
perception as much as fact.

The government wants us to believe there is an IT skills shortage
because it likes to be seen to be doing something about it. But it does
not, of course, want us to believe there is a shortage caused by
government policies.

The National Office for the Information Economy, the government's IT
advisory body, says there are IT skills shortages in many different
areas of the industry. NOIE tries to appear impartial, but in practice
it is a mouthpiece for the government. Communications Minister Senator
Richard Alston's ridiculous, and often highly partisan, press releases
are peddled through NOIE's website.

When I logged on last week, (www.noie.gov.au), prominence was given to
a press release from Senator Alston attacking his opposite number in
the Labor Party, Kate Lundy, for daring to suggest that NOIE was
underfunded.

I really don't appreciate government departments being used as outlets
for personal attacks by the government of the day.

But what of the IT industry? The leading body is the Australian
Information Industry Association, which says the skills gap is believed
to be large. This woolly, passive-voice construction hides the fact
that the association has no way of proving the shortage to be the case.

But it tries hard. Last year it commissioned an impressive-looking
report from a Canberra think tank, the Centre for International
Economics.

The report, Breaking the Skills Barrier: Demonstrating the Benefits of
Investment in ICT Higher Education in Australia, is available for free
from the association's website (www.aiia.com.au). It is a fine document
and worth reading, but it works from the premise that a skills shortage
exists. Among other things, it summarises various estimates made of the
infamous IT skills gap. The consensus seems to be that we have about
30,000 fewer IT people than we need.

The problem is this consensus comes from industry, not from people
looking for IT work.

One school of thought says many in the IT industry are manufacturing
fears of an IT shortage to get handouts from government and to be able
to hire cheaper immigrant labour.

IT companies do not wish to train people, even graduates, because this
costs money. This has become a big issue in the US, where the
Information Technology Association of America, the AIIA's much larger
US equivalent, has been a successful lobbyist for the granting of large
numbers of work visas to foreign programmers.

Substantial evidence has emerged that the ITAA's efforts are largely
aimed at building a pool of cheap programming labour in the US,
indentured to specific employers lest they lose their visas, and are
not aimed at reducing an IT staff shortage. There are many who believe
this to be the case in Australia.

This is an important issue, and one I would like to look at further.
Please drop me an e-mail (note my new address).

e-mail: graeme@philipson.info

This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/15/1023864366686.html

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