the Labour Market Survey Report - Council of European ...

The IDC approach is based on estimates of IT system development and service delivery activity and an
assumed human resource requirement (in terms of “full-time equivalents”) to staff this activity. As is inevitable
in such an approach, the occupational classification assumed is in reality more of a functional classification.
It uses a unique, apparently forward-looking, classification, involving 3 broad categories of skill:
• ICT skills,
• e-Business skills, and
• Call Centre skills.
The ICT skills category is split into (those required for) five different types of computing (“technology
environment”):
• “Internetworking” (Internet protocol environments; networking infrastructures)
• “Applications” (application software development and delivery)
• “Distributed” (centred on client-server infrastructures)
• “Technology-neutral” (IT business consultancy: work to align clients’ IT and business
processes)
• “Host-based” (centred on large server environments)
And e-Business skills are deemed to consist of:
• “Internet strategists”
• “Internet-dependent” activities
While the approach to composition of demand is interesting and the categories chosen are useful in
relation to the way IT business is categorized, they are not a particularly valid split of skill requirements,
and they suffer from their uniqueness. As a result, there is no way of relating them to, testing
them against, or above all reconciling them with more robust estimates based on widely accepted
classifications of distinct occupational skill requirements. Specifically, IDC have made no attempt to
relate the “full-time-equivalent” estimates they provide for current and recent years with the realities of
the numbers known to be in employment. For example, the figures given in the EITO 2001 for the supply
of ICT skills in the United Kingdom in 1999 and 2000 are seriously unrealistic in relation to what is known
of employment levels in the UK ICT Practitioner labour market (see Annex A). This inevitably raises real
doubt as to the validity (indeed meaning) of the estimates for the future, especially at the European
level, and knowledgeable industry and labour market commentators in different European countries
remain sceptical about the excessive magnitude of these figures. For example, the total number of IT
Practitioners in the UK (as specified by the sum of the figures for the five SOC-90 codes that cover all
direct IT roles – see Annex A) were, in 1999 and 2000, a little over ½ of the IDC estimated supply total
for just their “ICT skills” categories*.
* IDC acknowledges that its approach is based on making “technology forecasts relating to product shipments,
and then attaching work-rates to the shipment of IT products”… the estimates are asserted to be “based on the
‘real’ amount of work (in person-hours) necessary to make IT products work effectively”. “This means that IT work
undertaken by, for example, an office manager would be included in the numbers and that office manager might be
.3 of an IT professional” (quoted in Mason, 2000). While even this approach would be unlikely to result in anywhere
near the effective doubling of the workforce that the discrepancy in the figures would require, the view taken in this
study is that the requirements for IT Practitioner skills are fundamentally different from those of IT End-Users (see
Annex A), so that the office manager given in IDC’s example would not need higher education, or technical training/
experience of an IT Practitioner to perform the functions carried out in the .3 of his/her job indicated.
C E P I S I.T. PRACTITIONER SKILLS IN EUROPE | Section 5 | 73