Skills shortages, regulatory uncertainty, poor government ICTs and shrinking global economies hamper confidence in the local ICT market ONE OF THE CENTRAL themes to emerge from ITWeb`s IT Confidence conference recently was the lack of skills in the IT and telecoms sectors.

It was a high-level meeting between many of the country`s top IT company CEOs, market and financial analysts, and attentive industry representatives, held at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, just north of Johannesburg.

"SA still struggles with productivity problems. ICT is a skilled sector - and the productivity is disappointing compared with other countries," said ABSA senior economist Ridle Markus. "Government is not able to retain skilled people, let alone attract them," said the outspoken Mmamathe Makhekhe-Mokhuane, chairperson of the Government IT Organisation (GITO). "The issue of skills remains one of my sore points," she told the delegates.

"When it comes to critical and scarce skills, special funding can be obtained. However, how many of us can confidently say what are the critical skills - everyone in this room will give a different answer," she added.

SORE POINT

Makhekhe-Mokhuane`s address also highlighted the broken promises of ICTs in government. "We have very serious problems of broken business processes. Before we look at the role of ICTs in aiding service delivery we have to get our processes right - I still don`t have an answer as to why are processes are so broken."

And, while sustainability and skills development are two of GITO`s main areas of focus over the coming years, she believes that the urgency of getting the country ready for the 2010 World Cup will spur government into fast-tracking some of the critical ICT projects currently on the agenda.

The importance of skills development was brought to light by Simon Scarrot`s comments that there are many business processing opportunities for South African companies, with $7 billion of contracts in the UK up for renewal, for instance.

He believes it is important for local companies, even small niche players, to get involved in this market.

CONFIDENCE IN THE INTERNET

From a perspective, in the financial services industry at least, `s said that the successful foiling of card-swapping syndicates (code-named project Xerox) should give people confidence that even clever methods of fraud can be beaten by the bank. Turning attention online, it seems phishing is no different. Olivier said a major phishing attack broke out recently, and fast response times by the bank meant that no customers lost any money.

But it seems that the average South African consumer still lacks confidence in e-tailers. Despite analysts observing that online retail and shopping is growing at encouraging rates, Edcon`s CIO says simply: "we as retailers simply haven`t got it right when it comes to Internet retailing."

With lots of people living far from cities, but with Internet connection, it would make sense to see a greater use of online retail facilities, he suggested, adding that stores would also be able to "stock" more goods if there was a more positive online trade.

Developments in the IT industry and environment over the coming months and years will have a huge impact on the success of e-tailing in South Africa, he argued.



Tags: IT  Confidence