The 2024 edition of the IITPSA South African ICT Skills Survey – long recognised as an important reference work on the state of ICT skills demand and supply in South Africa – has gone live for survey input.
This survey was previously co-authored by Adrian Schofield, Professional Member and Fellow of the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), and the late Prof. Barry Dwolatzky, IITPSA Fellow, Emeritus Professor in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits University and Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University.
The 2024 ICT Skills Survey is an industry wide skills analysis by the IITPSA, conducted by Africa Analysis, under the guidance of Adrian Schofield and sponsored by SoftwareOne Experts South Africa.
The IITPSA ICT Skills Survey includes online questionnaires that assess skills demand and supply from both a corporate and practitioner perspective. The objective is to identify the most pressing skills needs from the corporate perspective, balanced with the view of current skills capacity of the practitioners and their intentions for future skills development.
The survey data will also be reinforced with in-depth interviews on topical issues such as the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI on the ICT skills landscape, and the state of remote and hybrid work two-years post-pandemic.
IITPSA CEO, Tony Parry, says: “The ICT Skills Survey is an important resource for South African ICT practitioners and employers, and the sector, as it outlines the current state of ICT skills demand and supply, and offers insight into how this is expected to change in the short term. In this the 13th edition of the survey, we will again focus on the most topical issues impacting ICT skills in South Africa.”
Marilyn Moodley, Country Leader South Africa and WECA at SoftwareOne, says: “The flagship IT Skills Survey, is an important reference, with broad impacts and benefits for all businesses. Understanding deficits in the market helps us to build skills pipelines and fill the gaps where the shortages are, and drives an understanding of what IT professionals need to do to upskill and meet future market needs. We are honoured to work with the IITPSA to help understand and define South Africa’s IT skills environment.”
In the corporate survey, the research will look at digital skills shortages and capabilities across key technologies in 20 industry sectors; as well as the ICT skills organisations expect to need in the next 12 months and how organisations plan to meet these needs. In this year’s survey, organisations will also be asked how the Covid-19 pandemic affected skills availability, and what impact the pandemic has had on workforces. The ICT practitioner survey will assess the qualifications practitioners have, their approach to further skills development, and how the pandemic has affected their work.
The ICT practitioner survey will assess the qualifications practitioners have, the technical activities in their daily work, their approaches to skills development, and their thoughts on remote and hybrid work in South Africa and for companies abroad.
The two questionnaires are now live and can be accessed via https://va.eduflex.com/iitpsa-surveys/login where respondents can register and then login to select either or both of the surveys.
