NBN Co, the company responsible for delivering the National Broadband Network (NBN), may face a skills shortage and consequent project delays as a result of rebuilding efforts in post-flood Queensland and continued mining projects.
NZICT, the lobby group for the ICT industry, is working on a stocktake and assessment of the value of current training courses in ICT. The project is a contribution by NZICT to assist in tackling the skills shortage in the industry.
It used to be that companies weighed the purchase of a vendor's software mostly by its merits — whether the packaged application was robust enough for a company's needs, how it would play with the company's other back-office systems, how long it took to implement and, of course, whether the customer could get a good price from the vendor.
Formal training is just part of the solution to the ICT skills crunch, according to Microsoft New Zealand’s managing director Kevin Ackhurst. While Microsoft drives many of the most popular ICT certification programmes, Ackhurst says that is not really what it’s all about.
For the fourth year running, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has rounded up a number of organisations and shipped them off to Germany’s enormous IT fair, CeBIT, to spread the word about living and working in New Zealand.
Delivering on a key election promise, the Australian federal government has announced it has commissioned a new defence whitepaper.
There’s no sign of a let-up in demand for IT staff this year, says AbsoluteIT Auckland director Martin Barry.
Just awarded the “Irène Joliot Curie” award for mentoring young women scientists, Marie-Paule Cani sees a huge untapped potential for women to engage creatively with computer science. But women won’t make that choice if they keep seeing IT as boring, male dominated, and nothing to do with people.
There’s another change in the top ranks of the NZ Computer Society. Shortly after the resignation of CEO Doug White, the president, Richard Donaldson, reached the end of his two-year term and stood down to be replaced by Don Robertson.
When it comes to hiring, many ICT firms are working within an HR framework that was designed for an era when there were fewer jobs than today.
Cisco Systems has declared the IT worker shortage to be its number one prohibitor to growth. Cisco's goal of becoming a US$50 billion (NZ$67 billion) company by 2010 will be unattainable if the skills shortage is not addressed. The company has developed a pilot programme starting in the US market under the guidance of Celia Harper-Guerra, who will hold the title of senior director of worldwide channels. Harper-Guerra is a former human resources executive with 15 years' experience at Cisco.
We are currently experiencing the fourth IT industry boom in the last 10 years. Whereas the forces and trends feel very similar, the drivers and reasons for the current boom are fundamentally different.
Mainframes are getting so easy to manage that fewer people are required, according to a recent report. But there remains a big skills gap despite IBM’s efforts to improve the situation.
While the skills shortage is still driving up salaries, the rate of increase in IT pay has slowed, according to recruitment firm absoluteIT’s latest remuneration survey.
The ICT industry is the hardest hit by the current talent crisis and skills shortage in the Australian market, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 CEO survey reveals.