Army wages war on IT skills shortage

The Army is deploying new skills management software for IT workers as part of its commitment to the government's Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).

Skills management specialist InfoBasis will provide 1,000 licences for its Enterprise Skills Infrastructure (ESI) system following a successful year-long assessment by the Army.

Major Colin Code, of the Army's human resources department, explained that the system would help ensure that IT skills gained by personnel during their service would be accredited if they returned to a civilian environment.

The Army selected InfoBasis ESI because it felt that the system best supported the skills process it had already developed.

"The Army had already identified the training and education required across the board, and had developed a core training plan built around the SFIA framework," said Code.

He added that the system would make it mush easier to match candidates to posts.

"When the Army is looking at putting an individual in a specific post, if we know the skills profile of the post and the skills profile of a number of candidates, then we can easily match the two," he said.

"Individual IS professionals use the system to record their work-based learning or higher certificates. InfoBasis ESI then generates their skills profile, which is recorded in a database.

"So if we know, for example, that an individual's role involves project management, the system will immediately pop up the fact that he or she needs to do a Prince 2 course."

A training review conducted in March 2001 made the use of SFIA mandatory across the Ministry of Defence.