Local ICT industry body, the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA), has increased the scope of its ICT-focused initiatives and the organisation has earmarked millions of rands dedicated to boosting SA’s ICT sector.
As SA’s ICT professional body, the organisation says it has committed up to 50% of its annual income to foster its multiple initiatives and programmes, to help enhance the sector.
Established in 1957 under the name Computer Society South Africa, the IITPSA plays an important role in accreditations, skills development and assessments for the sector, and serves as a voice for the IT industry, as well as a networking platform to ensure a high level of practice among ICT professionals.
Its ICT programmes include the Women in IT Chapter; the annual ICT Skills Survey,carried out in partnership with Wits University’s Joburg Centre for Software Engineering; and the Computer Olympiad, which it bills as the oldest youth IT skills development programme globally.
The organisation also spearheads the annual IT Personality of the Year and Visionary CIOawards, held in in partnership with ITWeb and the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
In an interview with ITWeb, Thabo Mashegoane, president and board chairperson of the IITPSA, said that despite delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the body has developed plans to rollout additional programmes, as part of its strategy for 2021.
While the pandemic scuttled the IITPSA’s usual activities and programmes, the institute pivoted quickly and launched its Tabling Tech webinar series, which has become increasingly popular with both members and non-members from across Africa’s ICT sector, he adds.
“From a largely academic membership, the institute has evolved and grown significantly over the years to become a broad-based professional body, focused on skills and career development.
“Thanks to the success and reach of our Tabling Tech webinars during 2020, IITPSA will increase the scope and frequency of these events this year. We are looking into adding soft and business skills development programmes to the events. We have also developed a programme of accrediting training and education institutions and providers to support our members’ career development and the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities and we expect to add more institutions to this programme in 2021.”
TheCPD initiative, which consists of learning and related activities that develop and maintain capabilities to enable professional members to perform competently within their professional ICT environments, will be further enhanced and expanded this year, addsMashegoane, who is also chairman of ICT association, the Africa ICT Alliance.
As it looks to celebrate its 64th anniversary this year, the IITPSA has grown significantly over the years, garnering over 9 000 members locally, he notes.
Membership gives professionals access to international IT professionals’ communities and offers credibility to both IT professionals and the companies they work for, which has contributed to “an increase in the number of enterprises seeking membership for their employees”.
The introduction of the Professional CIO (Pr.CIO) designation in SA in 2019 made the IITPSA a world pioneer among ICT professional bodies, it says, as the only designation assessed up to level seven of the Skills Framework for the Information Age international skills and competency framework.
“To date, 20 highly-qualified and experienced CIOs at the pinnacle of their careers have already been awarded the Pr.CIO designation.During 2020, the IITPSA also achieved the renewal of its International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) IP3 accreditation for a further five years. Through the platform, the organisation will continue helping to shape and implement policies to foster professionalism in the global ICT sector.”
The institute is a member of several bodies, including the South African Bureau of Standards, the IFIP, the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organisations and the National Science and Technology Forum.
It is also recognised by the MICT SETA, with relationships, and/or memorandums of understanding with the American Association of Computing Machinery, the Australian Computer Society and the British Computer Society, among others.
Many threats to SA’s 4IR progress
As the shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic reverberates through the global economy, industry insiders believe that in a worst case scenario, the ICT sector may never fully return to pre-pandemic levels.
Also speaking to ITWeb, Tony Parry, CEO of IITPSA, explained that while COVID-19 has had an impact on SA’s ICT sector, there are several other challenges expected to continue plaguing the industry in a post-pandemic SA.
He says the main challenges facing the sector include:
- Ensuring quality education as the foundation for careers in ICT roles.
- Enabling affordable access to broadband connectivity for all South Africans as the foundation for economic growth.
- Increasing threats in the cyber security arena – there are more and more massive losses of personal data, risk of breaches affecting utilities, transport, etc.
Despite SA being on par with global counterparts in the sector, the ICT skills dearth remains the biggest challenge, threatening SA’s fourth industrial revolution progress, he adds.
As part of its role to encourage more young people to enter the ICT sector, the IITPSA has several scholarship and bursary programmes.
The institute has also developed the Women in IT Bursary applications bursary and mentorship programme to encourage more women to enter the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
“ICT skills are in short supply in SA and, as a SAQA-recognised professional body in this industry, we need to ensure talented, top-performing students are given the opportunity to enter this sector.”
In terms of the progress on projects that are under way, the IITPSA says the 2021 edition of the ICT Skills Survey will be launched during the course of this year, and the judges are currently busy with this year’s IITPSA President’s Awards, which will go ahead, despite restrictions on gatherings and face-to-face engagements.
“The latest ICT Skills Survey will be the first such survey to compare the IT skills environment post-COVID-19 with the earlier environment. Despite delays wrought by the pandemic and lockdown, the 2020 IITPSA President’s Awards will go ahead within the next few months – specifically recognising IT professionals who maintained excellence amid the adversity of the lockdown,” notes Mashegoane.