Archive - Year 1999

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Archive > Year 1999 > ITSD > 10th Anniversary

IT Training Strategy for the New Millennium

IT in Government

A government has a duty to serve its community. The what extent should government be proactive and to exert leadership accordingly might possibly be a little controversial; but the expectation of government to be responsive is clearly not contentious. To be responsive, government must not be out of step with the aspirations of its community and dominant global trends that are driving businesses and governments.

As the Internet empowers citizens and democratizes societies, it is also changing the classic business and services paradigms. New models of commercial service delivery are revolutionizing the market place, changing society and impacting the lives of ordinary people. The running of a government and the delivery of government services must therefore remain consistent with the models of operation adopted in commerce and industry.

Whilst the Internet has enabled Hong Kong business to access regional, national and global markets, Hong Kong must also be conscious of the fact that Internet has already offered to their competitors--who are eCommerce-enabled, albeit offshore--the Hong Kong market and those markets where Hong Kong businesses have, in the traditional business model, a geographical advantage or a physical foothold.

In order that Hong Kong will not be left behind in the global rush into the eCommerce era, Hong Kong needs to examine its position urgently, realign its strategies and respond to the challenge in a timely and decisive manner.

To succeed, we need to focus; and to focus we need to identify our targets. To be timely and effective however, we need to move in a coordinated fashion. Many issues such as technology accessibility, Chinese information interchange, trade facilitation, international transportation, on-line trade laws, privacy, copyright, security, etc. may be relevant policy initiatives which need to be resolved quickly and the resolution of each one must dovetail with the rest.

Government can facilitate eCommerce or inhibit it. Whilst over-regulation and conflicting policies from different agencies may inhibit the growth of eCommerce and eServices, unregulated eCommerce could leave consumers unprotected. The SAR government should also seek to participate in the development of Global Information Infrastructure and to provide adequate training to eCommerce and eGovernment users.

The development of eCommerce and eGovernment needs an adequate quantity of quality professionals, trained and remained up-to-date on Information Technology. The responsibility for IT skills training rests with government-funded entities, professional organizations, commercial organizations, product vendors and continuing education spawn-outs from universities. There must however be opportunities to deliver greater benefits to society through better coordination among the training providers.

The Committee on IT Training & Development (CITTD)

Of all of the training providers, the VTC plays a dominant role. So how is the IT training function organized at the VTC? The Committee on Information Technology Training and Development (CITTD) of the HK Vocational Training Council is represented by a cross-section of business, industry, government and training providers. With the arrival of the eCommerce era, the CITTD is committed to playing a full role in support of government's strategy for the new millennium by offering high quality IT training to industry in a cost-effective manner.

It has been identified in the latest IT manpower survey that Hong Kong would benefit from a greater effort in developing its IT professionals. The latest EMB report, released in August 1999, indicates that the supply of IT professionals needed in the next five years will be in acute shortage. With the rapid growth of Internet activities and eCommerce, the Hong Kong government must keep abreast of the development and be prepared for a full and determined conversion to eGovernment.

This is urgently needed because of the burgeoning demand for support from the community who looks to its government to take the lead into the Electronic Age in the new millennium. Failure to offer the needed electronic service interfaces with industry and the public or a less than timely effort to bring related laws and regulations relevant to eCommerce operations into effect are tantamount to giving up the battle in securing Hong Kong's place in the rapid transition to the world of eCommerce.

The business community also has few alternatives for growth if they are not geared up for eCommerce as they will be out-competed by competitors who are ahead in identifying their niches in the electronic era and have accordingly made the necessary steps in ensuring a successful transformation.

The success of eCommerce and eGovernment depends much on the early establishment of a culture which encourages lifelong learning and the creation of a mindset which accepts the inevitability of the globalization of the supply chain for production and marketing and the tremendous pressures they will exert on the reduction in the cost of transportation which would in turn trigger the rapid development of global transportation capacities. The resultant development of mega-transportation hubs to dovetail with the transformation will present an enormous challenge to Hong Kong as the natural and dominant transportation hub of Asia. In the new mindset, the people of Hong Kong will also need to be aware of the globalized nature of the Internet and the efficient cross-border transportation of business information have created opportunities for distant planning and control.

Given these changes, the competition will increasingly be on responsiveness and the quality of products and services which will be driven by the need to customize rather than to mass-produce. The restructuring of traditional business processes is therefore inevitable.

The challenge for the CITTD in the midst of this transformation in industry is to address the needs of local IT training and IT culture development and to work with other functional units within the VTC to achieve some of the broader objectives relevant to the transformation of businesses and industries. A long-term IT manpower development plan and a positive push in fostering the right IT culture in local business and industry communities will be expedited.

IT Training in Hong Kong

Let us first take a look at the current situation of IT training in Hong Kong. At present, there are three main modes of training available in the market. The first and the most common practice is to invite IT experts from leading IT-developed countries such as USA and Britain to hold short courses or seminars. The airdrop of IT techniques and concepts often provides a quick input and stimulation for the IT community in Hong Kong. This approach to training is also helpful for promoting local awareness of near-term developments and could avoid the long lead-time and high cost of long-term investments into alternatives.

However, short-term stimulation needs to be sustained and the one-time visits by overseas experts may not be able to fulfil this requirement, nor can they provide tailor-made courses that suit the local culture and business environment. Introduction of pre-mature technologies through training could also induce risks if implemented without a clear understanding of what the local business needs are without some careful judgment on the suitability of the technologies for localization.

Besides the visits by overseas experts, the recruitment of local IT practitioners as part-time trainers is also common. The use of local experts can resolve the problem of inadequate local relevance and the shortcomings of one-time deals since the practitioners are locally sourced, and the continuity of training can be maintained more effectively. The training cost can also be greatly reduced when compared to staging seminars hosted by overseas IT experts.

The drawback of using local IT practitioners, however, is that they are not necessarily trained on manpower development. They may not have the aptitude, the aspirations and the commitment to training where a consistent and dedicated team of trainers is required to actualize a more fundamental and long-term solution for the development of IT professionals and an IT culture in Hong Kong.

The third type of IT training is provided by local professional trainers. Among these trainers, there are commercial and vendor-oriented training organizations which focus on product-specific training. Whist this source of training is most important, it will not provide generic IT skills training for the evolving technology.

The IT Training and Development Centre (ITTDC)

The Information Technology Training and Development Centre (ITTDC) of the Vocational Training Council (VTC) is mandated to carry out CITTD's strategies and directives in developing and delivering IT training in accordance to market needs. In addition to meeting the immediate need of industry and Government, the ITTDC also takes into account the long-term manpower development requirements of industries and the requirement to achieve a good utilization of available resources.

ITTDC training staff are academically well-qualified specialists with experience in industry. They are abreast with market needs and IT developments. The ITTDC will play a unique role in identifying market needs and providing timely training to fill the gap left by the universities and the product-specific training offered by IT vendors. There are a number of market- responsive plans initiated by ITTDC that will provide a positive push in IT training and development.

Industry Support Services ? The spawning of IT culture in SMEs is critical in the overall IT development in HK as the SMEs account for more than 98% of all industrial and commercial entities in Hong Kong. ITTDC will provide consultancy assistance to those SMEs who might not have the critical mass to retain the needed expertise in-house or to afford the services of commercial consultants. Once the initial obstacles for SMEs to develop their internal IT culture and capabilities are removed, it will be much easier for them to continue the IT development within the company. This will generate more demand for IT consultancy in the near future and thus providing more opportunities for the ever-expanding IT consultancy business.

This practice is mutually beneficial to the industries and ITTDC as the training skills of Centre staff are constantly updated with practical problems of applying technologies in industry. Trainers at the ITTDC will, during the course of providing the industry support services, be able to identity opportunities for enhancing the courses in ITTDC with empirical experience.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this initiative is the staff development value to ITTDC professional trainers. Engagement in a limited amount of industrial support service will facilitate the updating of knowledge of the trainers themselves.

Support for Government Initiatives ? There are a number of large-scale public services e.g. Electronic Service Delivery (ESD), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) which are due to be launched by government. However, the agencies responsible for implementing the programs may not have the necessary resources or the mandate to deal with the scale and scope of the changes and the workload involved. Collaboration and co-operation between training providers and the relevant government agencies will ensure that IT skills and application can be carried out effectively across the community. Agencies such as the EMB, ERB, ITSD, ED and Labour Department are consulted for their different IT training requirements. On-going inter-agency IT projects and cross-training activities will enhance the co-ordinated effort to establish the IT culture and environment in Hong Kong.

Education and Training ? IT is a multi-leveled discipline. The profession often includes IT practitioners with various academic and professional backgrounds, from secondary school graduates to the university researchers. ITTDC intends to participate in initiatives such as the IT training for secondary school teachers as well as that for the IT coordinators. The Centre will also be involved in youth pre-employment programmes, government employees upgrades and in the follow-up courses for the ERB re-trained workers. ITTDC has established a market-responsive strategy in sector-oriented training and non-IT graduates conversion programmes.

Also, to position Hong Kong the Asia hub of IT, the city must leverage its bilingual advantage and secures for itself the role as a Regional Information Infrastructure to interface with Global Information Infrastructure (GII). At the same time, Hong Kong must improve its ability for Chinese information interchange, such that it has a better interoperability and compatibility with China as a key member in her National Information Infrastructure, and be able to capture the foreseeable business opportunities linked with the huge potential market.

For the local grass-root training, there are also opportunities to reach the mass users with the establishment of remote learning centres. Large residential settlements will then be able to log on to the learning centres and take up remote interactive and multi-media courses on general subjects. The current open university is working on a similar model, but the remote learning centres will open up the IT training opportunities to the general public who are eager to ride on the wave of the new Electronic Era.

The successful rollout and popularity of the remote multi-media learning initiative will lead to early establishment of IT culture and provide a rich IT resource, eCommerce and eGovernment based in Hong Kong. The issues of on-line trading, security, privacy protection and copy right of intellectual property must be included in the establishment of an IT culture. Needless to say, the related laws and regulations must also be stipulated and enforced by the government.

Assessment and training goes hand-in-hand with IT education. Without high quality and fair assessments, training effectiveness and efficiency cannot be measured and improved. It is therefore important that Hong Kong has its own IT Assessment Centre to set a fair and objective evaluation system for professional IT skills and to establish a skills hierarchy map for career advancement for IT practitioners.

The systematic assessment of professional IT skills will provide some useful reference for employers in the selection of job applicants and facilitate the acquisition of Government recognized skill qualifications. It also provides a comprehensive qualification framework encompassing all levels of IT skills from basic tools to system and network administrators with individual vendors? certificates and project management. IT skills assessment will help IT practitioners in the advancement of their own professional development with recognition from professional organizations such as the Hong Kong Computer Society and other local and overseas universities. It is also a goal to align the assessment system with the national qualification systems in the region. IT practitioners can then be pooled and deployed more efficiently.

In conclusion, the HKSAR should respond to the new eCommerce and eGovernment models with pro-active strategy. Co-ordinated training directives with early establishment of an IT culture will be formulated by steering committees such as the CITTD. ITTDC and other training providers will carry out the directives with effective and market responsive services and training courses. The VTC's effort in IT training and development will take into account the requirement to support the long-term manpower growth in the IT sector.

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