The IT&T Task Force will reinvent itself as the IT&T Skills Exchange next month and is currently adding the finishing touches to a portal that will create a virtual marketplace for tech skills in Australia.
"The portal will create a better match between the supply and demand for IT&T skills," IT&T Task Force executive director, Brian Donovan told ZDNet.
The skills exchange portal will pull together the IT&T industry, which will use the exchange to voice its needs, and allow education providers to post information about industry courses on offer. Individuals will then be able to use the portal as a tool to make career choices and transitions into the IT environment.
"The portal will be our shop window," IT&T Task Force executive director, Brian Donovan told ZDNet.
However, the skills exchange program has other initiatives in the pipeline that will benefit the Australian IT&T skills shortage.
A priority for the skills exchange program is to embark on a bout of information gathering in November and update a survey that the task force carried out last year.
The 1999 survey found that the demand for people with IT&T skills was running at 10 percent, whilst the supply of university students to this area was running at 6 percent.
Next on the agenda is the development of courses and skills programs.
"Continued professional development is the key to the growth of this industry," Donovan said. "Recruitment is not going to be sufficient, companies must share the responsibility of retraining and re-skilling,' Donovan added.
Donovan claims, however, that what passes as online learning in Australia is "pretty abysmal".
"It's nothing more than old-style 'chalk and talk' using PowerPoint presentations and emailed course notes," Donovan said.
The skills exchange will run a workshop in early December that will see IT industry representatives and education providers discussing modifications of current online learning programs and setting frameworks for future courses of this kind.
"It'll not just be a talkfest," Donovan said. "We hope to come away with actual next steps," he added.
The skills exchange program will also focus on awareness raising, "getting at the next generation of kids," Donovan said.
This will include continuation of The Siemens Science Experience - a summer school held at 34 university campuses Australia-wide - aimed at raising Year Nine students' awareness of the opportunities that science and technology university courses and careers offer.
"For our business to grow and prosper in Australia and New Zealand, we need a technically literate community of early adopters of new technologies," Siemen's chairman and MD, Helmut Pekarek, said at The Siemen's Science Experience launch.
"In Australia, our industry forecasts a looming shortfall in information and communication recruits. We hope that some of the school students enjoying The Siemens Science Experience this year, will join us as employees within a decade," Pekarek added.
A consortium of 18 companies that have invested AU$3 million in the IT&T Skills Exchange, an additional AU$5 million was supplied by the Government.
