Report of the Group C "The
need for specialist" appended to the recommendation of 8
March 2002
8 March 2002
Acquiring the
Capacity for Forecasting and Analysing
the Skills and Expertise in Information Technologies
The labour market for information technologies
covers the core skills of computing, telecommunications, and multimedia.
As it is, the labour market for computer experts is disconcerting
for all its prime movers and observers. The report by the Commissariat
Général du Plan (Commission for the National Plan)
which was released last December 19 and entitled Between Unemployment
and Recruitment Issues: Remember and Plan Ahead clearly depicts
the "highly atypical workings of this labour market".
Its main features are:
- Constantly changing core skills, whether said skills are practised
in information technology companies - builders, telecommunication
operators, software publishers or service companies - or in user-companies,
which now come in all sizes, and belong to every professional
branch.
- An indeterminate perimeter encompassing roughly 700,000 information
technology experts. This includes the jobs involving product and
service design and manufacture, and the assistance for their use,
whereas INSEE only counts some 360,000 computer experts, strictly
speaking
- A huge proportion of job recruits and departures occur because
of occupational redeployment, hence an overall impact on the labour
market that is variable and poorly known
- On an ever-tight labour market, two kinds of companies with
very different interests are in competition, i.e., the service
companies that recruit at least three-fourths of the new computer
executives and the user companies that employ over half of all
computer experts
- Job offers for positions are essentially for high-level beginners,
a tactical choice made by many employers, often service companies
or companies in other user-sectors of multimedia services, who
are sensitive to the novelty of these jobs, to the rapidly changing
variations in needs, and to the cost of retraining actual employees
or job seekers
Following the CISI (Comité Interministériel pour
la société de l'information, interministerial committee
for the information society) on January 19, 1999, a national expertise
and observation network was set up on the employment and labour
changes in the information society. The network along with the
Observatoire des formations et des métiers de l'informatique
(OFMI, observatory of computer training and jobs) has supplied
data for understanding the computer labour market. However, they
have neither the required means nor the authority to enlighten
the prime movers directly involved, (i.e., companies, the education
system, students, job seekers, and so on) on a continual basis.
The French economy needs more than just a retrospective analysis
of the changes on this labour market. It needs to be able to refer
to an independent source, indifferent to the interests of the
various categories of recruiters and able to provide results concerning:
- A capacity to analyse the most recent market changes on the
spot
- A capacity to forecast needs, with a focus on the emergence
of new skills and expertise
Said capacities imply ongoing relations with:
- the representative employer organisations
- the large employment mediation organisations (ANPE, APEC)
- the major institutes of higher education (universities, graduate
schools, and so on) and of adult education (AFPA, and so on)
- the research and development organisations focussing on the
production and use of information technologies (ANVAR, national
research networks, and so on).
The most poorly controlled segment of this labour market should
receive top priority, i.e., technician's jobs and the jobs involving
multimedia creation and formatting, where job-recruits often have
fewer than four years of college.
Recommendations
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The labour market for information technologies, the
most complex market of the French economy, must be addressed,
consequently the CSTI recommends:
- Equip France with a permanent capacity to forecast and
analyse information technologies skills and expertise. This
should include the ability to analyse the most recent changes
on this market and to anticipate future needs, with a focus
on the emergence of new skills and expertise
- Determine the place and resources of the structure
to ensure its independence from the companies recruiting
on this market
- Assign the structure with the priority goal of focussing
on the jobs requiring associate degrees (two and three years
after upper secondary school)
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Schools and
Information Technologieson
Schools
are the cornerstone of the Information Society. The primary and
secondary school systems have begun to organise to this end. This
effort must be backed but several bold actions are still required.
France, which had lagged behind prompting the educational system
to appropriate information technologies, has caught up with the
average in European countries. However, France is still far below
the levels boasted in North America, the Scandinavian countries,
and some Far East countries. Meeting the national challenge of
establishing the Information Society is combined with meeting
the challenge of honing its international competitive advantage.
Information Technologies in Schools:
A Subject Matter, a Work Tool, and a Teaching Medium
The
overlap of these three aspects explains why the issue is tricky,
and warrants sizeable resources.
The most common uses of information technologies - now word processing,
computing, and information search on the Internet - have become
the basic skills for citizens in their private and professional
life. Just as schools had to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic,
their job is now to make all students proficient in this new skill.
This policy has been in effect since 2000 with the creation of
the Brevet Informatique et Internet (B2I, certificate of computer
science and the Internet).
Ten million students, most of whom are interested and often fascinated
by multimedia are a powerful engine for the Information Society
and a very efficient relay spurring the awareness of the older
generations.
After secondary school graduation, the first job or higher education
often involves using information technologies: schools must have
familiarised the student with this work tool.
The specialist jobs at the IT supplier and user companies will
account for a growing share of first jobs: schools must have sparked
the students' interest in these jobs.
There are almost as many teachers as there are information technology
professionals. The need for teachers to appropriate information
technologies for their teaching jobs warrants extensive, special
resources.
The Key Factors:
Equipment, Networks, Training, Services, and R&D
For the school system to appropriate information technologies co-ordinated
actions in every field are required:
- Equipping schools with computers, an endeavour that has already
received major resources, should be continued. Because the teacher's
job is partly done at school and partly at home, this effort should
be backed by substantial aid to help teachers acquire personal
computer equipment.
- Networking the computer terminals and servers in each school
- the school intranet - the Internet access of these networks
through efficient connections (1 Mbps at least in an average size
school), and the access to said networks from teacher's home,
student's home, and at some institutional, educational, and logistic
partners of schools - the school extranet.
- Networking schools to facilitate joint work and give schools
access to shared software and teaching resources.
- Deploy extensive teacher training, not only in the skills required
for using technological tools but also for using information technologies
for teaching and for student, parent, and school relations. This
effort must be backed by recognition of teacher's personal effort
in the collective appropriation of information technologies, at
least in terms of career advancement.
- The availability for each student of an individual digitised
space, enhanced with tools and contents, and connected in different
ways to the collective spaces of the classroom, the school, and
possibly the family - the digital schoolbag. Ongoing testing should
be encouraged and correlated, to draw the lessons from said tests
quickly before going on to their rapid extension. The tests should
also serve to recreate and reinforce the ties with families that
must not be cut off from their child's school life because of
the sudden arrival of technological tools.
- A major support to teaching research and testing focussing on
the use of the ICT, either through direct attendance or distance
teaching, or both together, and to the development of 'manuals'
adapted to the electronic era.
In all these fields, many actions have been deployed. They have
been prompted by the Government, the local authorities, and teacher
communities. This effort must not lose momentum. On some issues
it should be speeded up: broadband Internet connection, teacher
training, research and testing.
Two fields still require special attention:
- Upstream: network and information system engineering;
- Downstream: local support to the use of information technologies
for teaching.
Here we find two weak links and unless a bold action is undertaken,
they might threaten the efficiency of the measures taken to circulate
information technologies in the school system.
The reinforcement of engineering capabilities involves marshalling
internal and external skills and expertise. This will involve exceptional
back-up measures considering the scarcity and cost of said skills
and expertise on the European market.
The access to services and the motivation of the prime movers are
no longer durable impediments to the deployment of information technologies
in the school system. However, actions are required to overcome
the reluctance or even discouragement stemming mainly from the complexity
of the operating modes and the too oft-repeated freeze-ups or breakdowns.
These inconveniences will endure for another several years and fade
away thanks to the findings of upstream engineering (more reliable
and easier-to-use architectures).
Accordingly, systematically providing local support to information
technology users in schools has become crucial, somewhat like what
has been set up in big companies and most administrative services.
This support is emerging with educational assistants (currently
8,000 jobs) but the fast-growth of computers all running at the
same time will lower the efficiency of this assistance. Furthermore,
this kind of assistance is not affordable for thousands of small
schools. The set-up of call centres at the school district level
will only be able to meet a part of these needs.
Recommendations:
Reinforcement of Current measures, Engineering, and Local Support
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The CSTI recommends the following for the successful
appropriation of information technologies by the school
system:
- Broaden the effort of providing schools, secondary schools,
and upper secondary schools with equipment, to include their
networking and widespread broadband connection to the Internet
- Reinforce teacher training efforts and help teachers
acquire computer equipment
- Set a goal of defining a minimum platform for the
'digital schoolbag' in a joint network with all the networked
schools for the beginning of the 2002 school term
- Step up public research efforts and support to research,
in teaching, using information technologies for teaching,
and learning contents adapted to the information era
- Launch a scheme to marshal the internal and external
skills and expertise in network engineering and information
systems for schools
- Assess the need for permanent, local full or part
time support jobs in the largest schools and program the
related job-recruitment
- In a flexible and pragmatic manner, call on all the
available skills and expertise in addition to young professionals
at the start of their career, to provide local support in
the other schools
- For this purpose, define the types of contracts that
will be serviceable for hiring temporarily unemployed specialists,
local companies in information technologies, and other people
known for their proficiency in this field
- Prompt the local authorities to take measures in favour
of local support designed for both the SME and schools
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