Skills plan needs experts' support

A quick search on our web site, www.computing.co.uk, finds more than 10,000 stories that mention IT skills, and our online archive only goes back to the late 1990s.

Sadly, the number of failed industry initiatives to address skills shortages, skills gaps and every other kind of skills problem identified in UK IT is pretty long as well.

So the expectations - and the fears - for the IT Sector Skills Agreement (SSA) are justifiably high.

But we believe this time there is a difference.

e-Skills UK chief executive Karen Price and her team have worked hard to make the SSA as inclusive of all interested parties as possible.

This is not a vendor-led initiative to persuade more people to learn programming or project management, or whatever product they will be pushing in the next few years.

Nor is it a single-issue initiative designed to address problems such as recruiting women into IT or tackling the digital divide - all of which are worthwhile but can suffer from the lack of a wider context.

The SSA is uniquely devised, backed and supported by the industry, major corporate users, academia and the government. All are proclaiming their intent to use it to create an environment for developing lifelong skills at all levels, from schoolchildren to students, to IT professionals and everyday computer users.

The aim is to generate measurable improvements in UK productivity by developing and maintaining IT skills throughout the population. This is an ambitious goal, but the UK no longer has the time to equivocate over the importance of technology in the way we live and work.

For the SSA to succeed, it will require support from the most vital community - IT leaders in companies and government bodies across the country. It is vital that IT directors, managers and professionals buy into the new skills plan to maximise their opportunity to play a central role in the UK's future - and to safeguard their own.