DRAFT inForum 2011 submission – Anstasia Govan

Personal profile – please update by Monday 28 November 2010

Anastasia (Ana) Govan is a senior Australian Information Architect with inforg Information Solution. Formal education includes a Bachelor of Arts in Information Management, Graduate Diploma of Management and currently undertaking Masters by Research in Information Communication Technoloy and business. She has worked extensively with not for profit, private sector and government throughout Australia, Asia and Japan and specialises in information architecture, business analysis, strategy, reporting and governance areas such as quality, privacy, risk and policy.

Ana has over thirteen years of experience and has held positions as Director, Trainer, Project manager, Consultant and Academic in information, technology, project and planning & development areas covering library, records, information technology, water/power networks/generation, health, academia, governance and aboriginal affairs.

Ana was awarded Young Professional of the Year 2006 by Professions Australia, was a finalist in the 2005 NT AIM Young Manager of the Year awards and was named by BRW magazine as one of the leading female IT Executives in Australia in July 2006. In 2008 Australian Computer Society recognised her contribution to IT across Australia including the youngest person to be appointed to the National Board.

She has recently held National Board positions with Whitehorse Strategic Group and currently with Australian Computer Society and Records Management Association of Australia. She is also a full member of Australian Library and Information Association and Australian Institute of Information Management.

Title – Please provide a shorter version of this title for the conference program by 1 February 2011Are Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) employers getting what they want in the Northern Territory? A comparison of employer needs, employee competencies and availability of appropriate training.

Abstract – Please provide a version of about 200 words by 1 February 2011 please

Description of the issues to be addressedThis Masters thesis will examine if ICT employer expectations of hard and soft skills in the Northern Territory in the Information, Communication and Technology

(ICT) industry are adequately reflected in the duty statements they have written and locally available Northern Territory training.

ICT is defined by technologists in the public interest (2006) as the study or business of developing and using technology to process information and communications. In developing the industry training is provided, hopefully to meet the hard and soft skill expectations of potential employers. Generally the Australian Computer Society, the Australian Information Industries Association of Australia the Australian Library and Information Association, Records Management Association of Australasia, the Institute of Information Management and Australian Society of Archivists define and represent the Information, Communication and Technology industry (ICT). These bodies also define requirements through course accreditation and core body of knowledge documentation. The Industry Training Advisory Board also sets out vocational training requirements and higher education institutions, such as Charles Darwin University, define graduate attributes.

Expected potential employee skills can be defined by sub categories such as hard and soft skills. Muchinsky (2000) breaks up skills of employees into three categories defining overall groupings for further sub categories identified by the Karpin Report (1995). Muchinsky (2000) identifies technical attributes as expertise in operational procedures such as web design and displaying professional body of knowledge; conceptual attributes as general intelligence and cognitive ability; and interpersonal skills as persuading, building relationships, self awareness, control and sensitivity to the needs of others.

For the purpose of this proposal I’d only chose one theoretical framework – It won’t matter which one as you can always determine that laterSocial capital in education and ICT will form the theoretical perspective of the thesis. Social capital is defined by the OECD as “networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate cooperation within or among groups” (OECD, 2001). Several government research papers by leading agencies such as OECD, National Office of the Information Economy and Australian Bureau of Statistics have identified ICT as the potential to develop and enhance community well being, trust (social and transactional), reciprocity the enabler of community and social capability, aiding social cohesion and building regional information economies (DCITA, 2005; Bandias, 2008).

The Kirkpatrick evaluation model developed to assess ICT training among teachers as described by Wu, et al. (2004) will be taken into account when identifying training of ICT potential employees. This model defines four levels of outcome evaluation of ICT training - reaction, learning, behaviour, and results.

Variables to be explored during the research include the following;

The relationships between the variables and the entities in the diagram above are complex and overlap. They cannot be considered in isolation. For example course content is dictated by accreditation requirements of professional societies for Higher Education courses and by competency package audits for the Vocational Education and Training sector. Graduate attributes defined by universities are expected to be the employers guarantee that students, upon graduate, have the expected hard and soft skills and are therefore ‘employable’. Above all, the most important variable is employers accurately defining their expectations in duty statements – the selling tool to potential employees. As part of that selling – the large number of job and course titles in the ICT industry may influence student expectations of the course they are undertaking.

Description of the importance of these issuesIn recent years the Australian Computer Society has completed three Northern Territory ICT Skills survey studies related to skills training and remuneration. A National study by the Australian Library and Information Association touched on skills and remuneration in the Northern Territory. In relation to records management no data has been gathered or analysed. These primary resources identify from employees information regarding training, skills and remuneration but not if employer expectations identified through job description statements are being met by training available in the Northern Territory. There are no identifiable research or articles focusing on the Northern Territory indicating a detrimental gap in the current literature.

Independent variables

Education of potential employee

Employer expectations of knowledge, skills & behaviours (soft/hard skills)

University expectation through graduate attributes of employer needs

Professional society expectation through accreditation requirements of employer needs

Moderating variables

Small size of NT Information & Technology industries

Insufficient student pool

Course content

Vagueness of graduate attribute statements

Intervening variables

Job and course title trends

Personal growth of individual

Understanding of chosen field of study by student

Accreditation requirements of professional societies and education organisations

Dependent variables

Hard & soft skills of potential employee

Attributes of potential employee

Employer accurately identifying soft/hard skill attributes needs in duty statements

Prior to 2008 Australian federal government agencies engaged in research or through external researchers to indicate if higher education and vocational training were meeting employer expectations. There are no current studies identified although Service Industries Training Advisory Council (SITAC) is currently undertaking a national review of the ICT training package. Several authors such as Barrie (2004) focused on student expectations and if courses met defined graduate attributes. In 2007 the Business, Industry and Higher Education Collaboration Council (BIHECC) undertook studies regarding if new graduates meet employers expectations. Organisations such as DEST (2002) and Monash University (2007) undertake almost annual employability studies by canvassing students and employers. DCITA (2005) identified that “there has been comparatively little research in Australia of the actual and potential use of ICT as an enabler of community and social capability”.

Nagarajan (2008) has more recently been exploring how employers and graduates see the importance of a higher or vocational qualification in relation to job readiness. Nettleton (2008) has covered the role of professional societies in aligning employers and employees expectations and soft and hard skill mixes.

This thesis will provide the baseline qualitative and quantitative data for the Northern Territory to map current employer expectations to courses available locally for the ICT industry. This research will inform current and prospective education providers of course content choice and contribute to the employability of local staff by potential employers through analysis of criteria identified in duty statements. It will assist Industry Training Advisory Board to identify training priorities for funding and assist Australian Computer Society, Australian Library and Information Association and Records Management Association of Australasia in guiding appropriate course recognition.

The research will also build upon the current body of work that has analysed graduate expectations, graduate employability, expectations of employers, hard and soft skills and professional society’s expectations. There is no identifiable Australian research analysing employer expectations through duty statements and the body of work will substantially fill the void of data upon which government, advisory boards, professional societies and education organisations need to align students and employers.

Description of the research methodologyIn order to obtain the quality of data required to achieve the research objective a mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative methods will be undertaken.

Qualitative data will be obtained by interviews with relevant stakeholders such as employers (up to 5 from each of the sectors of Library, Records and Technology), students (up to 5 from each of the Library, Records and IT disciplines) and representatives from professional organisations (the local Northern Territory boards of the Australian Library and Information Association,

Australian Computer Society and Records Management Association of Australasia), education organisations (such as Charles Darwin University) and the IT Training Advisory Board of the Northern Territory. Employers targeted for interview may be identified by job advertisements in the NT News Saturday editions over a period of 4 months.

The literature review will help inform the analysis of the interview responses. Questions identified by Jennings et al (2006), appearing in Attachment A, will be built upon to define a quantitative survey questionnaire to be provided to employers. Northern Territory members of Australian Library and Information Association, Australian Computer Society and Records Management Association of Australasia), educational organisations and the IT Training Advisory Board of the Northern Territory will be targeted for survey responses.

This two phased approach where unstructured interviews based upon Attachment A questions and advertised duty statements will contribute and inform the final quantitative questionnaire has been identified by Creswell (1994). Using mixed methodology is becoming more frequent (Santa 2008) and has the advantages of identifying different paradigms, reducing the likelihood of confounding findings and permitting triangulation, increased reliability of findings through divergent results and testing validity (Robson, 2002; Begley, 1996; Sarantakos, 2005).

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