Government skills plan is the right idea

It took a long time for the government to assert its purchasing power over IT suppliers.

It was only a few years ago that Whitehall first negotiated public sector-wide software licensing deals with major providers such as Microsoft and Oracle, but the potential has always been there to achieve more than just cost savings.

Government IT policy should be an exemplar to every IT leader in the UK, setting the standards for professionalism and best practice.

So it is very encouraging to see the latest initiative –­ a plan to force vendors to provide staff training to help develop the IT skills of the UK workforce.

Sector skills council e-Skills UK estimates that UK IT will need to recruit an additional 130,000 people into the industry every year for the next 10 years ­ a wildly ambitious figure, and one that it is almost impossible to see being achieved from where we are today.

But that target also shows the scale of the challenge we face. Within the IT community, we have long called for government backing to make the sector central to the economic success of the UK. The recession has made government realise we were right all along. Now, growing UK IT is not simply good for the sector, it is essential for the future of the country –­ and politicians know it.

Those 130,000 jobs will have to be filled somehow ­ – and unless action is taken swiftly, you can bet that a large proportion of them will end up sitting at a desk in India. That’s not meant to be anti-Indian or anti-offshoring, simply a statement of the facts about IT employment in the UK.

Many IT suppliers will no doubt privately resent government trying to dictate their training and development plans, but if the skills gap is to be filled, someone has to take a stand.

IT leaders in the private sector would do well, this time, to follow the government’s lead.