Top IT Issues for Employers of South African Graduates

Abstract

Technology trends and challenges in industry today are pressurising higher education institutions to rethink their curricula design, particularly for IT programmes. The World IT Project was designed to examine important issues confronting IT employers in many parts of the world. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the findings of a survey of South African IT employees, particularly related to the top technical and organisational IT issues faced by IT management and other IT staff. The results obtained were compared to those previously reported in earlier years, and to those of other countries that participated in the World IT Project. We found that the top technical and organisational issues in South Africa are not necessarily those receiving the most hype; rather, bread-and-butter issues such as reliable, efficient IT infrastructure or enterprise application integration are key concerns: issues often receiving insufficient attention in our academic curricula. Another important finding with educational policy implications is that the IT skills shortage is of much higher priority in South Africa than in the developed world; this highlights the need for additional resources in IT education.