The ICT industry may be a nationally strategic field that is suffering severe and chronic nationwide skills shortages, but peak employment strategy organisation Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) has frozen out the industry in formulating its new Ministerial Advisory Board (MAB).

With 15 members, the new advisory board – which will provide what Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O’Connor called “independent, expert and strategic advice… with knowledge and experience of key workforce groups” – is a who’s who of business and union organisations including the AiGroup, ACTU, Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, Business Council of Australia, and ACCI.

The membership also includes representatives of the Victorian Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions, and Western Australia Department of Training and Workforce Development, as well as specialised expertise from the likes of Literacy for Life Foundation executive director Professor Jack Beetson; Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion @ Work Professor Rae Cooper AO; Disability Advocacy Network Australia’s El Gibbs; and lawyer, human rights advocate, and TAFE board director Nyadol Nyuon OAM.

Chair Cath Bowtell is an experienced CEO, advocate, and board director with a background in superannuation and industrial relations.

Yet the only employee sectors directly represented on the board include the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, and Australian Education Union.

O’Connor, for his part, welcomed the board’s array of “tripartite partners and leaders”, noting that their advice will “ensure that gender equality and the economic inclusion of First Nations people, Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and people with disability are integral to JSA’s work.”

“The appointees,” he said, “all bring extensive experience and I am confident they will execute their duties with impartiality and diligence.”

Strong experience, but none in ICT

Perusing the employment histories of the newly nominated board members reveals expertise in sectors including healthcare, education, finance, construction, VET training, teaching, inequality, and other key issues – yet not one of the appointees has any experience working with an ICT-related business, industry association, skills development organisation, or other body.

That bodes poorly for an understaffed ICT industry that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously courted with support for 450,000 new TAFE places, 20,000 new university places, and 2,000 places at accredited startup accelerators as the government embraces industry targets to reach 1.2 million tech workers by 2030.

JSA’s own Skills Priority List (SPL) well recognises the ICT industry’s skills shortfall, with national skills shortfalls well documented in ICT-related ANZSCO codes including cyber security analysts, architects, operations coordinators, cyber governance risk and compliance specialists, and cyber security advice and assessment specialists; systems analysts; multimedia specialists; and web developers.

Analyst programmers, developer programmers, devops engineers, penetration testers, software engineers, software testers, ICT quality assurance engineers, and ICT systems test engineers – essentially, the entire software development lifecycle critical to building and securing the systems that run modern society – are in shortage nationwide, as are computer network and systems engineers.

And while JSA reports that Australia has enough chief information officers, NSW, Victoria, and Queensland are struggling to find enough network administrators and network analysts; Queensland can’t find enough ICT managers, and the Northern Territory lacks enough ICT managers and ICT project managers.

The ICT industry certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on skills shortages – JSA reports that 36 per cent of the 916 occupations on the SPL were in national shortage last year, up 5 per cent on the previous year – but its complete lack of representation on the new advisory board suggests that advocates for Australia’s 935,000 tech workers face an uphill battle to be heard on issues such as better training, crucial skilled migration policies, and public-private partnerships to target urgent skills shortages.

The omission is even more glaring considering that the ICT industry employs far more people than in any of the three industries that are directly represented on the JSA board: manufacturing, with around 715,000 workers; nursing and midwifery, with around 373,000 registered practitioners nationwide; and education, with around 307,000 teachers.

Membership of the advisory board “comprises a diverse membership which includes those with lived experience, including those from employee, employer and government backgrounds,” a Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) spokesperson told Information Age.

“As such, they bring a variety of insights and perspectives on skills and workforce issues,” the spokesperson said, adding that the MAB – which is empowered to consult widely and convene subcommittees where appropriate – “seeks input and views from a range of stakeholders, including the IT industry.”

“The information is used to develop and provide input and advice to Government on the nation’s current and future skills needs.”