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Digital skills – the requirement for upskilling in this area and the lack of available talent in Ireland – have been the hot topic in 2011.
Earlier this year, we at Prosperity published our 2011 Digital Salary & Employment Survey. As part of this we wrote a report outlining our experience of the sector.
As 2011 comes to a close we are bringing you the official line from State agencies/Government organisations that have an important role to play in the future of digital skills in Ireland.
We sent out questions and received responses from:
IDA: Responsible for foreign direct investment and bringing the household names such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and eBay to Ireland.
Enterprise Ireland: Responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets. Actively works with 300 software companies (it has another 300 on its books) in helping them export their wares abroad.
Expert Group on Future Skills Needs: Advises the Irish Government on skills needs and labour market issues that impact on enterprise and employment growth.

Una Halligan, Chairperson, Expert Group on Future Skills Needs

How important are digital skills to Ireland’s job creation prospects?
Ireland is a successful major centre for ICT operations. Nine of the top 10 software companies in the world have substantial operations here. The large talent pool of ICT professionals that currently exists here is valuable both for foreign owned and Irish companies. The ready availability of top quality talent has been an important contributing factor to the success of multinational companies in Ireland. The cluster of internationally renowned firms and smaller Irish companies offer a range of attractive career opportunities for professionals.

What skills are in demand?
There is a strong demand for high-level ICT skills arising from an expansion of the business operations of companies over the last year, inflow of foreign R&D investment and formation of new start-ups.

An increasing share of employment within the sector is being accounted for by people with high-level skills. This is a result of a shift in subsector employment from hardware towards software; a general shift in the skills mix; and a pattern of simultaneous creation and loss of jobs, resulting in lower-skilled jobs being replaced with higher-skilled.

Immediate skills recruitment demand mainly relates to high-level ICT talent – computing science and electronic engineering Honours Bachelor Degree (Level 8 ) and above-especially for personnel with several years experience. There is also a requirement for foreign language fluency skills with cultural awareness – required for technical support and sales and marketing activities. Analytical skills, initiative and communications skills are increasing valuable skills in helping develop new business solutions for customers.

Firms are also willing to recruit some persons who have not quite the technical skills profile they are looking for and train them up – especially persons with analytical thinking, initiative, creativity and good communications skills. These are increasingly valued for the development of business solutions for customers.

Emerging skills demand are around cloud computing; service design; database management; social networks and media, development of e-commerce applications and internet marketing.

What actions are under way or need to be made to ensure we can supply this demand?
The continuing professional development of staff within enterprise is essential in ensuring that emerging skill gaps are addressed – as companies move towards higher value products and services. Companies that run internships are very satisfied with them – and students certainly benefit from the work experience.

Inward migration is valuable in its own right for the cross fertilisation of ideas and practices which underpins innovation. Many multi-national companies here are European and global centres, and the availability of a talented pool of people from a range of countries is a positive attraction for them.

Boosting the high-skills supply pipeline in terms of the numbers and quality is the best way to ensure that skills recruitment needs will be met – and to help realise greater employment opportunities for graduates. The numbers of young people entering such programmes had fallen over the period 2002-2007 – but over the last four years there has been a welcome 40% increase in acceptances.

There is an ongoing need to communicate the availability of the range of attractive ICT career opportunities – both in the ICT sector and in related sectors such as international financial services, to students, parents and teachers. This action is best industry led with the support of third level institutions. Industry understands the nature of work on offer – that it involves working with a team of people, often of different nationalities, on the development of products and services which impact on the wellbeing of all in society.

There is also a need to attract more female students into STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] disciplines. It is essential to boost the numbers of young people taking higher level Leaving Certificate maths so as to increase the potential supply pool from which STEM disciplines at third level draw upon.

A High-Level ICT Skills Action Plan is being prepared jointly by the Department of Education and Skills and the Higher Education Authority, with the support of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs to boost the domestic supply of high-level ICT supply in terms of numbers and quality – in the immediate and medium term. These measures will require the sustained support and collaboration from a range of stakeholders – in particular from enterprise.

Website: www.skillsireland.ie

Brendan McDonagh, Manager of Planning, EU, Strategic Investments and RD&I Policy at IDA Ireland

How important are digital skills to attracting foreign direct investment?
Despite the recession, demand for digital skills remains strong, ranging from information security, data hosting, payments, digital advertising, film, animation, e-learning, to customer support and global business services (including international HQs’ operations). The games industry also presents high growth potential and opportunity for Ireland. This is illustrated by recent job announcements which span a variety of sectors, from ICT (HP Ireland, Avaya, Quest Software) and games companies (PopCap Games) with the financial sector featuring prominently as an employer of IT skills (Fidelity Investments, Monex, Fidessa, Murex).
Job creation is expected to continue in these sectors, with jobs likely to span managerial, professional and technician levels. Some leading global ICT companies which have announced job expansion plans include Dell, Hewlett Packard and LinkedIn. In line with trends in the sector, most of the investments are in the areas of cloud computing, software and contact centres all of which require digital skills of varying degrees.
Recent reports have highlighted the major economic opportunities for Ireland in the cloud computing and games sectors. The reports have shown that c. 9,000 and c. 4,500 jobs respectively could be created in these sectors, relying heavily on digital skills.
•    Ireland is poised to become a global cloud centre of excellence due to our significant software economy and combination of talent and track record. A growing number of global businesses in the IT industry are involved in this strategically important activity which can create high-value jobs and drive competitiveness.
•    Ireland also has the potential to become a global games hub for the 21st century. The games sector is experiencing strong growth leading to an increased employment in core games companies, with potential for further growth in a host of interrelated activities in the digital economy including social networks, search engines, animation, film and video, and e-learning.

What skills do your clients demand?
Multinational companies have a strong record for generating employment opportunities in Ireland. A 2011 IMI/National Irish Bank Survey of Multinational Corporations in Ireland shows that almost half (48%) of multinationals are expecting to grow employment numbers in the next 12 months, while only 13% of firms surveyed expect to decrease employment numbers. This growth is feeding strongly into Ireland’s export-led economic recovery, with multinationals here now accounting for over three- quarters of exports.
IDA is working with multinational companies to help transform their operations in order to best position them for future growth and ensure Ireland remains a leading competitive location for foreign direct investment. A key element in the transformation process includes an uplift in the skills of the workforce to meet the increasingly complex challenges of the digital economy.
Multinationals who are considering investing in Ireland frequently highlight the need for employees to be strong in one or more of the following: basic digital skills; software skills and both European and International languages. In addition companies focus on the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Demand for digital skills is expected to increase among multinational companies in Ireland, driven by the following factors:
•    Harnessing ICT is expected to feature prominently in businesses’ efforts to reduce costs and improve efficiencies through innovation in business processes. This is expected to further expand the use of SaaS (software as a service) and cloud computing platforms.
•    Increased use of the internet for marketing, advertising, sales, networking, communication (blogs and social networks) and recruitment purposes throughout the economy.

What actions are under way or need to be made to ensure we can supply this demand?
There is continued demand for graduates with appropriate digital skills across all industries. Initiatives such as Project Maths and the introduction of bonus points for Leaving Certificate mathematics to improve numeracy skills have been introduced.
•    Project Maths was introduced to improve the numeracy skills of second level students by changing what they learn, how they learn it and how they will be assessed. The programme will place a greater emphasis on understanding mathematical concepts, and developing problem-solving ability, focusing on understanding and skills in the teaching and learning of mathematics.
•    The introduction of a bonus points scheme for higher-level maths in the Leaving Cert from 2012 should increase higher level maths uptake and achievement, developing numeracy skills which are fundamental in order to develop digital skills and to attract investment to Ireland.
The State plays a critical role in ensuring that the supply of workers is conducive to employability through the education, training and activation system, and by reducing the mismatch between the skills available through the unemployed and the skills required by client companies. A number of policies to enhance labour market activation have been introduced in the government’s Jobs Initiative in May 2011, targeted at those who have left employment in areas which are now suffering from structural employment.
Conversion courses for non-technology graduates and initiatives such as Springboard have a vital role to play in ensuring this demand is met. The ‘Springboard’ initiative provides up-skilling and retraining for unemployed people in areas such as digital marketing, engineering and medical devices so that they may fill current or future job shortages in these areas. A number of the courses focus on technology enabling more people to choose careers in the broad range of sectors where demand for these skills is growing.
A new National Internship Scheme, JobBridge, was also launched during 2011 in order to provide work experience placements for a six or nine month period. The scheme will give people an opportunity to gain valuable experience to bridge the gap between study and the beginning of their working lives by providing time-limited work experience placements in the private, public and voluntary sectors.
In order to strengthen Ireland’s position as a cloud computing centre of excellence, EMC Corporation has partnered with Cork Institute of Technology to launch Ireland’s first masters and undergraduate degree programmes in cloud computing. The programmes aim to provide graduates with the advanced conceptual understanding, detailed factual knowledge, and specialist technical skills required for successfully delivering cloud computing. They will also equip them to meet the challenges associated with the rapidly changing IT industry.
In order to meet demand for digital skills, where difficulties arise for companies accessing IT skills employment permits are issued to non-EEA software engineers and computer programmers.
The demand for sophisticated digital skills is resulting in a number of companies from various sectors competing for the same pool of expertise. While the initiatives highlighted above should lead to an overall increase in the availability of these skills, in order to maximise the return from these investments it will be necessary to build on the output of the initiatives and utilise the enhanced skills to attract further investment to Ireland.

Jim Cuddy Manager of Finance and Enterprise Software at Enterprise Ireland

How important are digital skills to the success of Enterprise Ireland client companies?
They’re critically important; we released a software strategy in 2009. One of the key enablers for software companies is the whole area of routes to market. Obviously the internet is a key route to market, the online market is central for our companies. It’s every bit important as geographical markets. For that obviously they need decent websites.

All the software companies would obviously have websites but they might not necessarily all be as good as everybody else’s. Without wishing to be critical of them there room for improvement particularly in terms of things like in inbound and outbound marketing.

For the inbound marketing they need their search engine optimisation sorted so people can find them.

What skills do your clients demand?
There are loads of vacancies in this area – there’s a huge shortage of IT skills. There’s a shortage globally but there’s a dramatic shortage certainly in Ireland. Currently we have at least 1,500 vacancies across our Irish-owned software companies; it’s not all in the internet skills area. We estimate that multinationals have at least double that. There’s a huge dearth of skills here. In the short term companies will probably find experienced people from overseas rather than from Ireland. In the medium to long term, hopefully the people will grow and be developed in Ireland.

The kind of skills our client companies are looking for are certainly programming skills in Java .net and C++, network engineers, business analysts, product managers, people with business intelligence/data analytics skills, digital media specialists, animators, Delphi programmers. They also need experienced sales and marketing people – somebody who has honed their skills over a number of years.

Localisation skills are needed too. In general our clients’ websites don’t seem to be very well localised for the markets they’re getting into. There’s a huge requirement for really effective localisation, not just in terms of the language but the look and feel with the site, does it fit with the culture of the people using it.

What actions are under way or need to be made to ensure we can supply this demand?
There’s a few things happening. There’s a brand we’ve set up here ‘IT’s happening here’ for Irish-owned software companies. In general the brands of individual Irish companies aren’t that well known. Everybody knows Google, Microsoft and IBM. Who knows Pacemetrics or System Dynamics?

We currently have a website Itshappeninghere.ie which features lots of the Irish companies and a page where companies can put in the links to the recruitment page of their website.

Phase 2 we will be pushing out the brand internationally and it will be accompanied by a searchable website. Companies will find the experienced people from abroad in the short term.

In parallel with all that there is a range of conversion courses under way: FÁS, Springboard and the HEA, and other bodies. Some of those courses are aimed at technical graduates who are unemployed. Others are aimed at anybody who’s unemployed to give them some introduction to the software industry and IT skills.

Those courses will start producing an output in 2012. In terms of the employability of them in the IT industry it will be a mixed bag. It will be an important stream of people that will become available next year.

The date 8 December may be traditionally synonymous in Ireland with Christmas shopping, but one thing that consumers won’t need to buy is quality reading material.

A new magazine for the tech community, available on digital platforms, is to be launched on Thursday.
Idea magazine, explains Publisher Martha Rotter, will be free and will be available online and formats such as ePub. “It’s all web standards-based so it looks great everywhere,” she says.
The magazine will provide coverage of start-ups and individuals at the cutting edge of Ireland’s tech industry. “The audience is people who are working in the tech community; we’re trying the things that would be interested primarily with them.”
Rotter, a freelance developer who formerly worked with Microsoft, had noticed a gap in the market for such a niche publication when she moved to Ireland four years ago.
The Idea magazine team includes Design Director Stewart Curry and Editor-in-Chief Niall Kitson.
Go to readidea.com to sign up for notification of the magazine’s launch – the ideas for upcoming issues are very promising!