Live Webinar: Creating a plan for digital skills

Many will have heard about the Industry Transformation Plan currently being developed for the digital and technology industry, but what is it really and will it actually make a difference?

Join MBIE Policy Manager Robyn Henderson, who is overseeing the development of the plan from Government’s side, and ITP CEO Paul Matthews who is overseeing the Skills component, to find out more about the Plan, and especially the Skills workstream and how you can get involved.

Robyn will give a quick general overview of the Plan (What, Why, How), followed by a deeper dive into the plan of attack for Skills from Paul.

If you’re interested in education and skills, or the future of the digital and tech sector, this session is for you. There will also be an opportunity to get involved in the next steps of the development of the skills component of the Plan.

What is the Industry Transformation Plan?

In June 2019, the Government launched its Industry Strategy, outlining its approach to growing strong and innovative industries in New Zealand. In response to the impacts of COVID-19, the Industry Strategy was updated in June 2020.

At the core of the Industry Strategy is the development of Industry Transformation Plans for selected sectors of the economy, where there are opportunities to lift productivity and growth or where significant transition is required. ITPs are long term plans developed in partnership with Government and industry, articulating a vision and an action plan for a sector.

Digital technologies will be vital for our future economic and social wellbeing, and will help drive future productive growth. For this reason, this sector was included in the initial set of ITPs and NZTech is working on the plan in partnership with MBIE.

Why are we focusing on skills?

Skills are critical to the growth of any sector, especially in high-skill and high complexity sectors such as digital and information technology.

There are long-standing shortages of specific skills within the digital technologies sector. One key factor is a mismatch between the skills industry needs vs the skills available in New Zealand; and this mismatch is felt most strongly in professional-level roles requiring a high level of both education and experience such as senior developers, IT architects, senior project managers, analysts, and machine learning, cybersecurity and data specialists.

Some of these gaps have previously been filled via immigration; while at the same time graduates from tech/digital courses, and other professionals with skills outside the areas of greatest need, are often struggling to find jobs. Immigration will always be part of the answer, but we need a stronger domestic talent pipeline for this to be sustainable and to support the growth of the overall New Zealand economy.

The pipeline isn’t just about increasing the numbers and skills of those entering the digital tech profession; but also both the demographic makeup and the career flow-through to the areas of greatest shortage. So addressing the skills mismatch and slow rate of career progression must form part of the solution.

Given the huge disruption to New Zealand’s labour market as a result of COVID-19, there is also a significant opportunity for the digital technologies sector to absorb displaced workers from other industries and good pathways will be necessary to smooth this transition.

In short, we’re trying to bring about a digital sector with a more streamlined and inclusive system of industry-aligned education and skills pathways, that addresses every stage of the pipeline from school to senior professionals.

The Industry Transformation Plan will help our community deal with some of these issues. Given this corresponds with one of our main strategic purposes as an organisation, IT Professionals NZ has agreed to take the lead role in the Skills workstream.

ITP Thursday Live Webinar

ITP’s magazine-style regular fortnightly Thursday Live Webinars feature the awesome TechBlog Live Tech Media Panel plus a special guest or panel each session.

These webinars are fully interactive, with heaps of time set aside for Q&A.

4.00pm: TechBlog Live – Tech Media Panel

The Thursday Live webinar will kick off with a chat with our Tech Media Panel, giving a quick roundup of this week’s big stories on TechBlog and elsewhere.

This week’s Tech Media Panel features:

Paul Brislen, TechBlog Editor
Peter Griffin, TechBlog Contributor
Sarah Putt, Editor of Computerworld and CIO Magazine

The team are a “who’s who” of tech journalism in New Zealand over many years. They know their stuff and between them have edited or covered tech for many household name publications in NZ.

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