CIRA Report: IT Leaders Struggle to Find Qualified IT Pros in Canada

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CIRA Report: IT Leaders Struggle to Find Qualified IT Pros in Canada

Two out of every five Canadian IT leaders have trouble recruiting IT professionals with the right skills, and almost half (46 percent) had difficulty filling a position in the last 12 months, according to a report released Monday by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) on Canada’s technology, skills, and competitiveness.

Hiring workers with the right skills is seen as a competitive priority, with 55 percent of respondents saying Canadian technology firms need to be able to recruit and retain workers with the right skills to compete globally, more than any other factor.

CIRA surveyed 1,200 Canadian Internet users and 300 leaders at IT firms in the country to produce the report From Broadband Access to Smart Economies, which will inform discussions at the upcoming Canadian Internet Forum, June 1 in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. The forum will likely include some calls for increased government involvement in infrastructure, as only three percent of those who feel Canada is competing well in the global technology market cite government infrastructure investment as a factor.

Nearly half of IT leaders surveyed said “Canadian technology companies aren’t equipped to compete globally,” and three-quarters said their major technology challenges require “made-in-Canada” solutions. The report refers to a Conference Board of Canada report which ranked the country 9th of 16 OECD countries for innovation, and indicated it is falling behind in ICT investment and connectivity.

Connectivity is not just a business issue, but is seen as crucial by Internet users for learning new skills (75 percent) and supporting childhood education (68 percent). Six in ten Canadian Internet users say that students should learn “basic programming/coding” skills, and IT leaders agree, with 88 percent saying coding should be a part of the core secondary school curriculum.

The global shortage of cloud skills led to the launch of AWS Educate a year ago, and a report from Incapsula in September suggested DDoS mitigation skills are also lacking around the world.

The average download speed for Canadians is 18.64 Mbps, as measured by CIRA’s Internet Performance Test, and a major divide between rural and urban users means many Canadian’s have much slower Internet speeds.

Source: TheWHIR