Modernisation of the IT occupations in the age of 4.0

The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) has been investigating whether the four dual Information Technology (IT) occupations, which have remained unchanged since 1997, need to be modernised. Against the background of the increasing digitalisation of the world of work, the aims of this process were to identify current and foreseeable requirements for skilled IT staff and to draw up proposals for the future shaping of the IT occupations.

The four dual IT occupations met with considerable demand from trade and industry when they were introduced in 1997. This popularity has been retained down to the present day. Over the past few years, the number of newly concluded training contracts has been around 15,000 annually and has most recently risen to 16,000.

Since the launch of the IT occupations, around 250,000 skilled IT staff have been trained for work at manufacturing and applications companies offering products and services in the field of information and communication technology. The IT occupations were a reaction to the boom of the 1980s, which was brought about by the standardisation of hardware and software and allowed new, cost-effective and individually deployable information and communications technology (ICT) to penetrate all sectors of trade and industry.

The flexible structure of the IT training occupations resulting from these lines of development was able to meet the differing requirements of IT manufacturers and applications companies.

The training occupation of information technology specialist, which offers two specialisms, has increasingly become a sought-after core brand within the IT occupations in recent years. The numbers of trainees entering this occupation more than compensate for the tendency towards a decline in the other three occupations. Between 2015 and 2016, the figures for newly concluded training contracts for the occupation of information technology specialist increased once more by 1,000 to reach a level of over 12,000.

The development of the Internet of things will continue to drive demand for IT qualifications in all branches. Nevertheless, many companies fear that the shortage of skilled workers is a particular factor which could hinder the progress of digitalisation.

Estimations on the development of the labour market assume that the need for skilled workers, which is growing anyway, will increase by up to 3.15 per cent more per year by 2030 because of the so-called fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) than it would without this new production structure. The rising number of interlinked sensors and actuators in production, software-intensive embedded systems and the digitalisation of whole business processes will continue to heighten requirements in terms of reliability of networks, real-time processing, data security and processing large quantities of data.

Although the resultant topics such as software development, cloud computing and big data and the huge issue of IT security are not fundamentally new, but universal and complex application scenarios are leading to new demands being placed on skilled IT workers.

In light of the developments described, the question posed for vocational education and training is the extent to which the existing IT occupations, even given their flexible and therefore adaptable structure, will be able to cover current and future requirements made of skilled IT workers in quantitative and qualitative terms.

For this reason, the aims of the evaluation concluded by BIBB in 2016 were to identify current and foreseeable requirements for skilled IT staff and to draw up proposals for the future shaping of the IT occupations. The investigation, which was carried out on behalf of the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie [Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy] with the support of an advisory council, followed a three-stage design. This comprised an exploratory phase and phases involving qualitative and quantitative surveys respectively.

IT occupations are both sectoral occupations for the ICT manufacturers and providers and cross-sectoral occupations which are used by the users and customers of ICT solutions. They are also interface occupations which combine information and communication technology with production technology and business management. The increasing digitalisation of all economic sectors will bring about a strong growth in the number of networked and interacting systems and will therefore further increase the complexity of these interface functions.

Skilled IT workers primarily work in a project-related way within an environment in which requirements change. The view of the experts surveyed is that personal and social competences will become even more important in future alongside professional competences.

The available results suggest that the IT occupations should undergo revision in respect of contents and structure:

The following recommendations may be made with regard to the design of the occupations. The two commercially-aligned IT occupations of information and telecommunications system support specialist and information technology officer should be merged due to the fact that they exhibit very strong overlaps. The two specialisms within the occupation of information technology specialist should be dissolved into separate occupations, because there is a clear difference between their profiles and demand continues to be very large in overall terms.

Two thirds of skilled IT workers are employed in branches outside the ICT sector, including in the manufacturing industry. With regard to the topic of Industry 4.0, consideration should be accorded to establishing content such as production management, virtualisation and embedded systems more firmly into the training areas of applications development and system administration.

The topic of IT security (data security, availability, data integrity and data protection including legal aspects) should be significantly strengthened. This should take place firstly via a fundamental cross-occupational understanding of issues relating to IT security and secondly via occupationally specific contents (for example risk analysis, protection of hardware and networks/infrastructure, encryption, rights, legal requirements, certification, training and so on).

Personal competences should be accorded comprehensive consideration within the training contents.

In order to take account of the increasing complexity, heterogeneity and speed of change of the requirements, differentiations in the form of elective qualifications should be introduced.

These and other proposals are currently being debated by the associations of the stakeholders involved on both the employer and employee side with a view to rearrangement.