UK Business Leaders Take Lead in IT Training

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E-Skills UK, an organisation dedicated to improving IT skills in the UK, has published its latest research on the IT sector in the ICT Inquiry.

The report brings together information garnered from employers regarding how successful they have been at recruiting ICT staff and using the technology for training. The quarterly report was drawn from over a thousand interviews with business leaders in the UK.

Marginal Increase

In the last part of 2005 the e-skills UK inquiry noted that there had been a marginal increase in the number of ICT professionals being recruited. The respondents to the inquiry’s surveys had predicted that there would be improvements in the ICT sector in the year leading up to the last quarter of 2006. The main areas expected to see improvements are IT hardware and software licensing. There were also small rises predicted in the levels of spending on recruiting and overall IT operations.

There was unwelcome news in the responses employers gave to questions about IT planning, as a large number of businesses indicated that they had no formal plans, to develop their IT operations, in place. The inquiry found that many firms were not viewing their IT strategy as a priority and consequently were reluctant to commit resources to implementing effective planning.

The inquiry has highlighted an important issue that has been pervading UK industry ever since IT became a critical part of business. IT developments are notoriously expensive and the temptation to crash ahead, not carrying out proper planning to keep costs down is hard to resist. Is it any wonder then that IT projects so regularly overrun, are badly implemented and conceived and usually end up costing vastly more than the original budget. It is encouraging that there was increased spending predicted, in valuable areas such as recruitment and training. Perhaps more should be spend of recruiting IT planners.

Dan Atkinson

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