Problems of the ICT sector and its employees!

The results of the survey organized by the Information Technologies Association (BiTekDer) in order to determine the problems of the ICT sector and its employees were announced at the ICT Summit.

Issues such as the lack of qualified personnel, the problems experienced by ICT departments and the difficult working conditions, budget constraints, lack of training were mentioned. BiTekDer sets up different working groups to address these problems.

Information Technologies Association (BiTekDer) started working with passion, although it was established a short time ago. In the “Sustainable Digitalization with BiTekDer Board Members” panel organized within the scope of the ICT Summit’20, the results of the survey about the sector problems were announced and information about the future studies was shared.

Education Foundation (TEV) IT Manager Mustafa Meral, İstanbul Chamber of Commerce (İTO) CIO Ethem Topgül, Olgun Çelik IT Manager Başak Berk and Mobisis Sales Manager Bahar Küşat Erdem attended as speakers to the panel moderated by GOSB Technology Manager Engin Işık.

Emphasizing that almost all business processes are rapidly transferred to digital environments and the effective use of information technologies is of great importance in terms of competition, Engin Işık said: “Today, investing in all infrastructure components needed for digitalization, in other words, connecting capital and finding the staff with the level of expertise to operate and manage many critical components are getting increasingly difficult.

In this direction, we have started a new formation under the roof of BiTekDer in order to share what we know and to analyze the needs of our colleagues correctly and to offer solutions. Our first step in our formation was to organize a survey that would understand the demands of our colleagues. According to the survey results, each BoD member in our association will take over a problem and undertake workshops and make reports of this issue and an action plan will be determined accordingly.”

Giving information about the results of the survey organized by BiTekDer, Başak Berk stated that: “As BiTekDer, we aimed to identify sector problems first. Therefore, we conducted a survey by directing the question of ‘what are the three most important problems in our sector for our members?’ Our goal here was to identify the most cited sector problems, appoint a voluntary Board member to each problem and seek solutions to these problems under the leadership of the Board member. At the point we have come to, I can say that our members also give importance to our survey and pay the necessary attention as we do. When we organize the responses, we see that a total of 271 sector problems, large and small, were expressed. We got a good number for the starting point. We gathered the most recurring problems of these problems under 10 main groups. When we look into the situation in a micro sense, we have obtained subgroups under these main titles. Currently, we have at least 5 sub-titles under each of our main groups. In this way, we will provide a more comfortable working environment for the working groups. They will also be able to benefit from subgroups while determining their starting points.”

Problems of the ICT industry and its employees

• Looking at the survey responses, the most frequently stated problem was the lack of qualified personnel with 14.4%. This problem challenges us in many aspects, especially sustainable digitalization, which is the subject of our panel.
• With a rate of 7.4%, one of the important issues was stated as the problems experienced by IT departments. In this context, there are sub-titles such as ambiguous job descriptions, still being seen as a support unit, lack of vision and not understanding the ICT department’s functions.
• There is a ratio of 7% indicating that there is a constraint on the budget, which plays a very important role in digitalization and making it sustainable. In this environment where the limits of technology are only limited by our own imagination, budget constraints lead us to cost-benefit analysis and detailed feasibility reports. We must have a certain amount of investment budget every year so that we can realize the technological moves expected and demanded from us.
• 6% of our members who participated in the survey think that lack of training is an important problem.

According to the survey results, other problems are listed as:

• The shortcomings in the national/local movement.
• Unfavorable working conditions such as low wage scale, lack of depreciation of employees, lack of job class rating, defending the rights of working hours, not being flexible, not being appreciated by busy working hours and wages.
• Lack of a collaboration and sharing platform.
• Problems encountered in digital transformation.
• Lack of authorized institutions.
• Regulatory challenges.