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The report from e-skills UK, the organisation that measures national supply and demand for IT professionals, said a key Government priority should be to develop the skills of existing ICT professionals by increasing the number of further education courses available.
It also advised the Government to make IT training available to people in 'underserved regions' by encouraging private training providers to spread themselves further afield by increasing funding.
The report identified that the actual content of some courses currently being taught could often act as a barrier to employment if it was not based around specific skills sets and called for greater communication between the Government and industry to help synchronise the material they cover with demand from employers.
Andrew Harvey-Price, Research Director of e-skills UK, said: "The report identifies key areas of investment and highlights how vital it is that employers and educators work together to address skills issues. The development of our IT professional workforce is fundamental if the country is to meet the challenges of the digital economy, raise productivity and increase competitiveness."
E-skills' report found an increase in the take up of IT-related further education courses last year with all regions experiencing a net increase over the last four years.
The number of graduates entering IT employment has remained steady at 12,500 over the last four years. However, less than one in five people who choose to study computer science at university actually end up joining the IT workforce.
The report also called for 'bite-sized' training courses to be made accessible to small and medium-sized employers and urged the Government to find ways counteract the region imbalance caused by IT professionals' preference to move to London and the South East.
The report found almost a third of the country's 1.2 million IT professionals are based in London and the South East.
Forty-six per cent of UK employers specified a need for improvement in the country's available IT skills, with the South East and Northern Ireland most likely to report skills shortages.
According to the report, whilst skills shortages still exist, the intensity of them has decreased.
Employers maintain there are particular skills shortages in development and operations roles, citing software and systems developers as being the hardest to recruit.
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Richard Powell, © Shout99.com 2002
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