About IT Professionals Australia
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IT Professionals Australia is more than a union – we are also a professional association. We represent IT professionals across Australia. We are your voice at your workplace and we are run for members by members.
What we do
We support individual members with
workplace issues, provide access to industry-leading
professional development and career support, as well as a wide range of other
services. With over 20,000 members, we amplify your voice on the policy and industry-wide issues that affect you. We work together for a better future for our members, to ensure we get the recognition, respect, and reward throughout your career and life.
You can find out more on how we support your industry
here.
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The following areas are those considered key issues for the IT industry and our activities focus on providing information about and campaigning around these issues …
Addressing workforce challenges in the IT sector – skills shortages
Consistent with the measures recommended by the Gershon Review and the NICTIA/ACS 10 year vision for IT in Australia, we are playing a leading role in addressing IT workforce challenges by developing and supporting strategies which will enhance Australia’s IT skills base.
Professional development and training for IT professionals
Skilled IT Professionals are critical to a robust commercially competitive IT sector and harnessing the potential of IT to contribute to Australia’s economic growth, productivity and innovative capability. Skills development is therefore an area of key importance for us.
Skilled migration and offshoring
We support skilled migration providing arrangements are in place to provide proper training investment in the local workforce, that sponsoring organisations have in place plans to reduce their reliance on overseas skilled workers in the longer term, and that rates paid are in line with those being paid by the market or relevant collective agreement, and updated annually. In general terms, we support skilled migration in the IT area subject to appropriate targeting and the ongoing review of the Federal Government’s Skilled Occupation List. In relation to offshoring, we are concerned that employers may choose to offshore IT and IT-related work in preference to sourcing labour from the local professional workforce and/or develop their existing workforce and believe incentives for onshoring may assist with retaining Australian jobs.
Gender and diversity issues in IT
2009 Manpower survey confirmed that 80 per cent of IT Professionals were male and over half of IT Professionals are aged 25 to 39. To address re-emerging IT skills shortages, we must look to members of groups currently under-represented within the IT workforce.
IT investment, R&D and intellectual property
We are committed to IT research and development initiatives including the application of existing technologies in new contexts as a means of enabling innovation, growing employment opportunities and improving Australian competitiveness and productivity. We are also committed to the role of intellectual property rules in incentivising and protecting research and development and innovation.
Green IT
We believe that, alongside green computing practices, technological solutions will provide the best means to reduce carbon emissions and power consumption, contribute to the reduction of global warming and combat climate change. Australian IT professionals will play a key role in researching, developing and implementing technology-based solutions to climate change.
Protecting and harnessing the contribution of the flexible IT workforce
We believe that the current lack of inclusion of the flexible professional workforce in public and private sector workforce planning is offsetting the potential for contracting professionals to help deliver organisational priorities in the public and private sectors, and is impacting the attraction and retention of quality contracting professionals in the IT sector. Where the flexible workforce is not included in workforce planning and people management strategies, these professionals will remain underutilised and Australian industry and Government will fail to realise the full potential of this valuable resource.
IT innovation for the community
We are committed to encouraging and promoting the development and implementation of IT initiatives – not only to drive improved organisational performance, competitiveness and productivity but also to improve quality of life, drive better service delivery and information-sharing, and to engage and educate the community.
ICT Employment Report 2021
Professionals Australia is calling on the information and communication technology (ICT) sector to do more to address gender diversity, discrimination and sexual harassment against women after the ICT Professionals Employment and Remuneration Report 2021 found little was being done by industry to address these significant workplace issues.
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