KEY ISSUES FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE G20

ICT specialists have been among the most dynamic occupations in recent years and several forecasts suggest
that the demand for ICT professionals will grow even faster in the near future. In 2014, ICT specialists
accounted for 3.6% of all workers in OECD countries. This figure hides large differences between men and
women. While 5.5% of male workers in OECD countries are ICT specialists, only 1.4% of female workers are
(Figure 37).
%
10
8
Male
Female
6
4
2
0
Source: OECD (2016k).
Some forecasts predict a significant shortage of ICT professionals (European Commission, 2014; OECD, 2014g)
over the next 5 to 15 years. These forecasts rely on a scenario-based approach which, by its very nature, is
hard to validate. Although imperfect, available statistics suggest less pessimistic scenarios (OECD, 2016k):
In ICT services, wages have been growing in line with productivity growth over for 15 years while
vacancy rates have remained stable or even decreased since 2007.
The share of online vacancies for ICT specialists has also remained stable in most countries for which
data are available since 2012. Median vacancy duration, i.e.: the number of days necessary to fill an
online vacancy for ICT specialists was just 32 days in France, Germany and the Netherlands in 2014.
In the European Union, only 3% only of enterprises reported hard-to-fill vacancies for ICT specialists, a
proportion that has not changed over recent years. Business surveys in Australia and New Zealand as
well as other international surveys report similar findings.
As available statistics are not comprehensive enough to fully address these questions, the development of
better measures – based on both official statistics and online vacancies – is an important step to strengthen
the evidence base in all G20 economies for policymaking in this area.
The diffusion of ICTs in the workplace is not only raising the demand for ICT specialist and generic skills, it is
also changing the way work is carried out and raising the demand for ICT-complementary skills. These are skills
that are not related to the capability to use the technology effectively but to carry out the work within the new
environment shaped by ICTs, i.e.: a “technology-rich environment”. For instance, higher frequency of
information made available by ICTs calls for better capability to plan in advance and to adjust quickly.
Organisations characterised by horizontal work enabled by ICTs call for more co-operation across teams and