V. Semynozhenko: Deficit growth of IT-specialists in the world is an incentive to increase their training in Ukraine

Ukraine is already now experiencing a significant shortage in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). But if to compare with the EU Member States or the U.S., which have faced with acute shortage of IT-specialists, this problem has not acquired those scales in our country yet.

But, the IT market of Ukraine is developing dynamically, so, we must take into account global trends and pay great attention for training of IT specialists in our development policy.

This was started by the chairman of the State Agency on Science, Innovations and Informatization (SASII) Volodymyr Semynozhenko.

According to him, there are around 18.2 million IT-specialists in the world. By 2019 this number could grow by 45 % - to 26.4 million people. Now the leader in IT is the U.S.A., where there are 3.6 million such specialists, the second place by India (2.75 million specialists). According to experts the situation will change already in 2018 and the number of Indian high skilled professionals will increase to 5.2 million vs 4.5 million IT specialists from U.S.A. By this time, China will have nearly 1.9 million programmers, and Russia - about 1.3 million.

At the same time, the Chairman SASII noted, the number of IT-specialists in Ukraine at the beginning of the year is about 250 thousand people, 40 thousand of them - high-quality certified professionals that create competitive export products.

"We expect that if there will be the current rate of annual increase in the volume of service in the year 2015 in the IT sector, and especially in the software industry 168.5 thousand new jobs can be created, of which 106 thousand in IT exports, 62.5 thousand - in the domestic market", - V. Semynozhenko said. In general, the field of information services will be involved 350 thousand professionals (in the export segment - about 125 million people, in the domestic - about 225 thousand).

At the same time, he added that the current annual growth of IT-specialists is 15.5 million persons, and it is unable to meet the needs of industry. The deficit in 2015 will be about 100 thousand professionals in the IT exports and about 70 thousand in the domestic market.

The problem, according to V. Semynozhenko is global. Thus, according to the European Commission, the European Union will face the problem of shortage of staff in the IT industry soon: it is predict that as early as 2015, the shortage of IT-specialists in the territory of the EU could reach 900 thousand and this despite the fact that the annual number of graduates for IT industry is at 100 thousand persons.

The SASII Chairman said that the key factor that influences the development of ICT is the provision of businesses of this sector of the economy with a sufficient number of qualified professionals.

"Now the state is taking serious measures to increase volume of preparing of specialists with higher education in ICT while improving the quality of their practical training," Volodymyr Semynozhenko said. In particular, an important step in this direction was the decision of the Government to double state order for preparing IT-specialists.

As the chairman of the SASII consider, it should be held an analysis of successful international practices on harmonization of educational and professional standards in the field of IT, assessing their possible application in our country. We should monitor the development of the market actualizing curricula according to the market’s needs. There is a need to improve the mechanism of public-private partnership on training specialists for ICT. Equally important is the development of a network of physical and mathematical schools and creating new physical and mathematical classes as it is a specialized training is the foundation for the formation of highly qualified specialists in the field of IT.