Extent of UK tech skills crisis in doubt

The UK is not heading for a technology skills crisis, despite fears to the contrary, according to chief information officers and the audience at the silicon.com CIO Forum held on Monday.

A panel of IT chiefs at the event was asked whether a lack of home-grown IT talent is creating a crisis for the UK.

For the prosecution, TripleIC chief executive David Butler argued that, despite the potential for offshoring IT, there is still a need for home-grown talent.

Butler said: "However many resources we use from overseas we need a nucleus of capabilities... and strategists and technicians to oversee it." But he warned that, while young people might understand eBay, Facebook and YouTube, they "have no idea that IT has a fundamental strategic role to play in the globalisation of world trade".

Part of the problem is that once IT was regarded as "dead cool" but now technology professionals are seen as geeks, Butler said.

But for the defence, Rorie Devine, chief technology officer of Betfair, said the UK is not facing a crisis — but in fact is doing quite well.

Devine blamed the end of the dot-com boom "in IT attractiveness" for a drop in the number of graduates, and said new technologies make it much easier to integrate teams working around the world. "We have to have a global perspective and see it not as a crisis but as an opportunity," he told the audience.

Devine added: "There's not a crisis but we can do better because there is a massive opportunity here — we need to be part of that solution and not the problem." Devine called for a target of 100,000 UK IT graduates every year.

But Chris Broad, head of information systems and technology at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, warned that universities need to improve the way they teach technology: "Academia does not understand commercial computing and the generation that does is close to retiring."

Broad said chief information officers and IT directors need to be out and fostering connections, and added: "We have to explain to the talented people that are out there what the career involves and how exciting it can be."

After all the arguments had been put on stage, the panel — which also included Transport for London Group chief information officer Phil Pavitt; Dominic Cameron, director of technology at lastminute.com; and Jane Kimberlin, IT director at Domino's Pizza — was undecided.

The casting vote went to the audience at the event in central London: 34 percent said the lack of home-grown talent is creating a crisis, while 59 percent said it is not, leaving seven percent unsure.