Competitiveness of Czech ICT industry- Requirements on ICT HEIs Graduates

ICT (Information and Communication Technology) industry is an important contributor to growth of European economy. Its contribution to the growth represents 5% of GDP and ICT also drive 20% of overall productivity growth [4]. In order to keep such contribution in the future, continuous supply of relevant skilled professionals into this industry is required. Some development scenarios of requirements for ICT professionals are presented in McCormack [9]. He also expects that ICT will generate almost 5.8 million new jobs till year 2015 in EU [9]. These new jobs will have to be saturated also by adequately qualified ICT specialists. Parts of these new jobs will be saturated through new employee entering into the ICT sector. Some possible impacts of these scenarios and new requirements on Czech ICT sector are also shown in the first part of this contribution. Next actual competitive position of the Czech Republic's ICT industry (ICT industry includes ICT manufacturing and ICT services) including partial analysis's for each ICT industry component, will be analyzed. Conclusions for new e-skills requirements based partially on Clark, D. [1] and partially on research work of research team members will be also provided. In the end of the contribution, the selected conclusions of ICT skills supply surveys performed by Faculty of Informatics and Statistics in the years 2006, 2009 and 2011 will also be presented. These surveys were performed among HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) in the Czech Republic and were oriented towards the structure of the ICT education and the level of ICT and non-ICT knowledge and skills in the ICT - oriented study programs. Methodology of these surveys also forms the part of this contribution. Contribution will be concluded by presenting the threats and opportunities for ICT graduates in Czech Republic in comparison to the industry demand and their comparison with selected European countries.