Guest Post by Gerry Docherty, Chair, Conscia Enterprise Systems
You may not have noticed, but we’re currently sowing the
seeds of the death of the Scottish ICT industry. Every year, we hasten its rate
of decline. Every year, the systemic failures of the Scottish ICT community
bring closer its increasingly-inevitable demise.
Hold on – isn’t the ICT industry one of Scotland’s few
success stories? Comparatively, it’s faring particularly well in the teeth of
the recession. Many of our indigenous companies are recruiting, and reporting
growth. There’s a steady flow of sparky
start-ups. All of which is encouraging, but it only masks the insidious threat
– that we have allowed the image of our industry to become so poor and so distorted
that it threatens the long-term viability of the industry itself, and the economic
health of Scotland as a whole.
To be competitive internationally, our key industries (like
energy, food&drink, financial services) invest substantially in technology
to reduce costs, improve productivity, and trade globally. Almost all of that
investment in hardware, communications and packages goes directly to Far East
and US-owned corporations. Add in government spending and consumer spending on
ICT, and you can see that the Scottish economy already runs an unhealthy
balance of payments deficit – certainly more than a billion pounds per annum - simply
in order to be a technologically-advanced nation. It’s a high price to pay just
to be a part of the global game.
So if Scotland’s economy is to be healthy in future, it
needs a vibrant, competitive ICT supply side which can minimise that balance of
payments deficit, by providing for more of Scotland’s ICT needs from a local
base, and by earning export dollars through selling our technology overseas.
That supply side needs high-end capability in innovation, technology, and
business management if it is to be truly competitive with the ICT industries in
India, China and the USA.
But high-end capability needs talent, and the simple truth
is that we are not attracting a sufficiently high quality of individual to the
industry, and we haven’t been doing so for some years now. If you have any
doubt, let’s look at the facts surrounding the major flow of talent into our
industry – our university graduates.
Scotland’s major universities are justifiably lauded as centres
of excellence for ICT research and teaching. Their figures clearly demonstrate
that they are magnets for the brightest overseas students. And yet, between
2001 and 2006, the numbers of native Scots studying ICT-related courses in
Scotland declined by 50%, at a time that the undergraduate population was on
the increase to meet government targets. The decline is continuing, anecdotally
by as much as 10% per annum.
At the same time, the female representation in ICT-related
courses in now comfortably less than 10% in every major university, so we have
a gender imbalance looming – never healthy for any industry.
And it’s not as if ICT courses are tough to get in to –
entrance qualifications for many ICT-related courses around the country have
been relaxed in the hope of attracting more students, without success so far.
As any university lecturer will tell you, the consequence of relaxing entry
qualifications is that those courses immediately become less attractive to
high-achieving native students.
Of course, there will continue to be star Scottish students
in every course, but the summary has to be that the Scottish ICT industry’s
upcoming talent base is reducing in quantity, reducing in quality, and
gender-imbalanced. These aren’t interesting statistics – these are frightening
statistics.
If we can’t attract high-achieving talent, we can’t compete
internationally. And if we can’t compete internationally, the future for the
Scottish ICT industry can only be one of gradual decline. And if the Scottish
ICT declines, the wider Scottish economy suffers even more.
But is our image really to blame for this state of affairs?
You bet.
20 years ago, ICT was the place to be if you wanted to
change the world. The overwhelming image was of an industry full of excitement,
invention and discovery – certainly attractive to high achievers. But,
primarily as a result of the hype and disappointment of the dotcom boom-bust,
the backlash kicked in with a vengeance. Over the past 10 years, our cultural image
as an industry has flipped – the world at large now sees us as geeks, or guys
who can’t get girlfriends, or socially-inept pasty-faced youths with their
faces in laptops, or the creators and consumers of disturbing shoot-em-up
games. It’s all been fuelled by lazy stereotyping in the media, but mud sticks,
and it’s going to be hard to shift. Granted, our image may be not as bad as
your average banker right now, but it’s deeply unflattering. We might laugh
along with the stereotype, and indulge ourselves in some self-deprecation sometimes,
but the consequences have been serious.
At school level, the new industry stereotype means that
girls simply don’t take up ICT – it’s not at all unusual to find Higher classes
of boys only. At University choices time, Mr and Mrs Newton Mearns are not at
all keen for little Johnny with his 5As to study for a profession with such a
poor image.
Now, insiders like you and I know that the industry isn’t
stuffed full of geeks, and that it is still a hotbed of excitement, invention
and discovery. For all the reasons outlined above, we owe it to ourselves, and
to the economy as a whole, to fight back against the prevailing stereotype, so
that we can again attract the highest-achieving talent into the industry.
Work undertaken in the past year by the ICT Forum for
Scotland, supported by organisations such as ScotlandIS, has identified this culture
change as an essential contribution to improving Scotland’s economic prospects.
It’s one of a number of ambitious targets adopted by the Forum, but hopefully
it will attract government and media support.
In the meantime, we can all make our contribution at a
personal level. Don’t blush when you tell people that you work in ICT. Don’t
laugh when they hit you with the geek jokes.
Instead, remind them that their world is built on what you
produce. Tell them that your industry has created modern society. Our systems
get oil out of the ground, run power stations, keep planes in the sky, support
communications and broadcast, underpin retail, provide logistics for transport
and distribution, and make business and government more efficient. Our
technologies support the disabled, and are powerful weapons for social
inclusion. Our industry is the heart of renewable energies, and green car
technology. In the future, what we produce will be essential to the revised
regulation of the international banking system, and in the fight to combat
global warming.
Persuade your children, nephews and nieces that if they want
to change the world, then they need to be the creators of technology, not just
consumers.
The fight back starts here.
Gerry Docherty is Chair of Conscia Enterprise Systems, and nmp. He also chairs Scottish Enterprise's ICT Markets Industry Advisory Group and is a member of the ICT Forum for Scotland. He served as inaugural Chair of ScotlandIS and was a board member until 2007.
