Modelling Supply-Demand for IT & Telecommunications Workers

["Keith Linard"]

Recent news reports from around the world indicate an impending market
shortage of IT&T skilled workers. The Australian Government has just
announced the establishment of a joint Government-Industry "IT&T Skills
Exchange" to develop policy initiatives to address this problem for
Australia. From the published Government material, policy thinking in this
area is very linear-deterministic. Thinking this would be an useful project
area for student modelling, with potential for contributing to public policy
debate, I did extensive literature searches, both on the WEB & in various
specialised electronic journal repositories (Emerald, Science Direct etc).
I found very little of substance. Of qualitative or quantitative modelling
I found a few (very loose) econometric projections and no dynamics studies.

This seems to be an important area of research for system dynamicists
because of the multiplicity of feedback interaction across various areas of
the economies. At the international level, for small economies, IT&T skills
shortages can result in Transnational companies moving work offshore ...
impacting on levels of foreign debt, exchange rates etc (Australias
exchange rate suffered severely over the past 2 years because of perceptions
that it is an "old economy") ... falling exchange rates makes local salaries
non-competitive on a world market, cutting incentives for immigration and
increasing incentives for emigration, especially of the most skilled. At
the national level, shortages have pushed up salaries, making University /
Teaching salaries very uncompetitive, leading to loss of IT&T
lecturers/teachers ... with implications for the capacity to produce newly
skilled IT&T workers. Etc Etc

I would be grateful to hear of system dynamics work addressing this topic at
local, national or international levels.

Keith Linard
Director
Centre for Business Dynamics & Knowledge Management
University of New South Wales

Phone: -61-(0)2-6268-8347
Fax: -61-(0)2-6268-8337
Email: k-linard@adfa.edu.au