Skills needs are urgent

Skills supply

IT&Telecom companies welcome the government's assignment to the Swedish Higher Education Authority and the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth on how to develop the supply of digital excellence. But the investigators must have an open approach, otherwise there is a great risk that the available skills will not be utilized.

The assignment is to analyze and make proposals on how the skills supply of digital excellence can be developed. In practice, this means that the survey and associated proposals carried out by IT&Telecom companies in 2017, which showed a feared shortage of 70,000 digital experts by 2022, is now being raised to become the social issue it really is.

Investigators must have an open approach

However, we would like to point out the following:

  • The investigators must have a wide-open approach to all possible sources of excellence: academic and non-academic, foreign and Swedish. We are concerned that the investigator may end up with the same limited intra-academic perspective that characterized the recently presented Styr och resursutredningen (STRUT) , an investigation that IT&Telekomföretagen has thoroughly criticized.
  • Higher education institutions, universities of applied sciences and other social actors that contribute to the supply of skills must not stop and wait for the results of the investigation. As the IT&Telecom companies' 2017 report showed, the needs are urgent and we need action now.