South Africans need to gain more exposure, communication and coordination between industry players to overcome the ICT skills crisis, agreed delegates who attended the CITi Software Engineering Colloquium.
The Third Software Engineering Colloquim, convened by the Cape IT Initiative (CITi) and the IEEE South Africa Chapter on 16 March 2010 in Cape Town, focused on in-depth research on the ICT skills crisis in the country.
“All the elements we need to solve the skills crisis already exists.What we need is more exposure of these initiatives and more coordination and communication between the various role players”, commented Marius de Beer of Scrumsense.
The Colloquim was chaired by Professor Johannes Cronje, Dean of the Department of Design & Informatics at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and Associate Professor Sonia Berman, Head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
“Some of the outcomes the Colloquium seek is to create value through engineering, improve interaction with lawyers, accountants and senior managers, broaden the software community and remove barriers, improve professionalism, recognize excellence and make the South African software community a worthy investment project”, addressed Prof Nico Beute, IEEE’s Education Society Chapter, one of the delegates present at the discussions.
Among the key points discussed at the event was the need of software engineers to be represented in the boardroom, developing and supporting the software eco-system particularly in the Western Cape and the creation of a unifying professional certification programme for software engineers.
The Colloquium was attended by over 140 representatives from the software industry, including software engineers, representatives from the City of Cape Town, Provincial Government, and the DTI, as well as academics and post-graduate students from various universities.
