Australia needs an innovative and competitive economy – and central to this is a high technology future and a vibrant local IT industry. This depends upon high levels of local skill and specialist expertise. To achieve this, IT professionals need to influence the future of their industry to create new and challenging opportunities. The recognition of the input of IT professionals, their remuneration and conditions, career development and skill currency are essential to developing a diverse, innovative, responsive and committed Australian IT industry.

We cover professionals in all disciplines within the IT sector. We are forward-looking and see opportunities for improvement based on professional values. Our approach is to be part of the change process to enhance the professionalism of the industry and create industry and employment security. Members become better informed and better decision makers and have access to our full range of services.

We represent not only IT employees but IT professionals operating as independent contractors, and IT professionals engaged via labour hire agencies. This broad and exclusive coverage means we are a strong and genuinely representative voice for IT professionals across industries regardless of their method of engagement.

The following areas are those considered key issues for the IT industry and our activities focus on providing information about and campaigning around these issues …

Addressing workforce challenges in the IT sector – skills shortages
Consistent with the measures recommended by the Gershon Review and the NICTIA/ACS 10 year vision for IT in Australia, we areplaying a leading role in addressing IT workforce challenges by developing and supporting strategies which will enhance Australia’s IT skills base.

Professional development and training for IT professionals
Skilled IT Professionals are critical to a robust commerciallycompetitive IT sector and harnessing the potential of IT to contribute to Australia’s economic growth, productivity and innovative capability. Skills development is therefore an area of key importance for us.

Skilled migration and offshoring
We support skilled migration providing arrangements are in place to provide proper training investment in the local workforce, that sponsoring organisations have in place plans to reduce their reliance on overseas skilled workers in the longer term, and that rates paid are in line with those being paid by the market or relevant collective agreement, and updated annually. In general terms, we support skilled migration in the IT area subject to appropriate targeting and the ongoing review of the Federal Government’s Skilled Occupation List. In relation to offshoring, we are concerned that employers may choose to offshore IT and IT-related work in preference to sourcing labour from the local professional workforce and/or develop their existing workforce and believes incentives for onshoring may assist with retaining Australian jobs.

Gender and diversity issues in IT
2009 Manpower survey confirmed that 80 per cent of IT Professionals were male and over half of IT Professionals are aged 25 to 39. To address re-emerging IT skills shortages, we must look to members of groups currently under-represented within the IT workforce.

IT investment, R&D and intellectual property
We are committed to IT research and development initiatives including application of existing technologies in new contexts as a means of enabling innovation, growing employment opportunities and improving Australian competitiveness and productivity. We are also committed to the role of intellectual property rules in incentivising and protecting research and development and innovation.

Green IT
We believe that, alongside green computing practices, technological solutions will provide the best means to reduce carbon emissions and power consumption, contribute to the reduction of global warming and combat climate change. Australian IT professionals will play a key role in researching, developing and implementing technology-based solutions to climate change.

Protecting and harnessing the contribution of the flexible IT workforce
We believe that the current lack of inclusion of the flexible professional workforce in public and private sector workforce planning is offsetting the potential for contracting professionals to help deliver organisational priorities in the public and private sectors, and is impacting the attraction and retention of quality contracting professionals in the IT sector. Where the flexible workforce is not included in workforce planning and people management strategies, these professionals will remain underutilised and Australian industry and Government will fail to realise the full potential of this valuable resource.

IT innovation for the community
We are committed to encouraging and promoting the development and implementation of IT initiatives – not only to drive improved organisational performance, competitiveness and productivity but also to improve quality of life, drive better service delivery and information-sharing, and to engage and educate the community.

To contact us, phone 1300 273 762 or email itpa@professionalsaustralia.org.au.