The Electronic Cottage

Diversity in IT: myths and realities (part 1 of 2)

Diversity is about ensuring that we maximize the contributions that people with varying experiences bring. Diversity policies and practices are inclusive of gender and sexual orientation, national and racial backgrounds, and physical abilities. Enacting diversity is the right thing to do. It also pays off.

Diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences enrich the creativity and quality of workplace cultures, processes, and outcomes. Diversity helps organizations innovate, compete and succeed in the global economy. It lets employers tap bigger talent pools and mitigate the effects of demographics and shifting career preferences. In a culture that increasingly celebrates diversity, it brings spirit and excitement to the workplace.

All this is well known. But of course diversity isn't so simple. It's a hot button issue,  susceptible to knee-jerk reactions pro and con. Sometimes, what seems obvious or desirable may turn out to be illusory - or, at least, debatable.

This certainly applies to diversity in Canada's information technology workforce. The main diversity issues here relate to three issues: gender, ethnicity/race, and the participation of new immigrants. In this post I discuss gender, and in the next, I'll take a look at ethnicity/race and immigrants.

Here's the preview: the conventional wisdom on gender is pretty close to reality. So far, that wisdom has not translated into sustainable solutions, but there are grounds for hope. On the other hand, the topic of ethnicity/race and immigrants has produced confusion and, perhaps, misplaced priorities.

Gender - female participation - is by far the biggest issue of the three. Women, whether as students or employees, are at best one quarter of the IT workforce. They are also more likely than men to quit IT for another function, or get out of the workforce entirely. They tend to work in ghettoized IT functions like graphics and Web design. Women rarely make it to IT top management, and are even less likely to be at the helm of an IT company. This has been an issue throughout IT's 50 year history, and it's not getting any better.

There is a lot of good research on this issue. Wendy Cukier's excellent summary nets it out:

• Socialization and early education. Computers are perceived as belonging to the male domains of mathematics, science, electronics and machinery. Though elementary school girls’ levels of achievement in math, science and computer use are as high, if not higher, than boys, their confidence levels are disturbingly low. The gap begins in grade 3 and increases with age.
• Systemic barriers to entry and retention in post-secondary institutions. Womens’ ways of learning are different from mens’ – more collaborative and focused on relevance. But most IT pedagogy is competitive and abstract.
• Impact of influencers and absence of role models. Parents, teachers, guidance counselors and peers all tend to agree: an ICT career is not the best choice for a girl.
• Misalignment of career descriptions with job requirements. The growing importance of creativity, communication, and collaboration in IT are not well communicated to students who are contemplating careers.

That last point is the most telling one. If young women actually knew how IT careers are changing - and the pathways to the new careers were more evident and, yes, less male-oriented - the numbers might actually start to change.

Consider this: if the number of women in IT increased to the level of men, the overall gap in the IT labour market would be pretty much eliminated. Instead, what has been happening is that, as overall IT enrollments have declined, the 25% ratio of female students has remained pretty much the same.

Lots of companies and organizations have tried to tackle this challenge. But progress has been slow, and frustrating. A lot of this activity has boiled down to marketing and messaging. But PR won't do the trick. The fact is, traditional IT is unappealing to many girls and women, for  reasons that make sense. Traditional IT is a male culture, about techie mindsets and activities that are decreasingly appealing even to males.

What's needed is something new and arresting - something that will change fundamental perceptions and the realities of what IT careers are all about.

I believe that the new IT that I've been discussing in this blog, and that the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's ICT Skills stands for, offers that promise.

Misleading data on IT offshoring underestimates the impact

Compared with the US and the UK, Canadian companies were slow off the mark in the offshoring explosion of this decade. Lots of anecdotal evidence indicates that they are now fully engaged with this business strategy. However the official statistics - the ones that governments use to set policy - are greatly misleading. We don't really know how much Canadian companies are going outside the country to obtain IT services. By the same token, we don't know how much Canada is exporting IT services to other countries.

One thing I can say for sure: the official statistics on IT services imports and exports significantly understate what's going on. Canadian companies obtain more IT services from other countries than the data suggests. They also deliver more IT services to other countries than we officially believe.

Why does this matter? Because offshoring changes the demand architecture of the IT labour market. This does not mean fewer IT jobs - far from it. But it means that we need a radically different composition of the national IT skill set.

As long as we fail to figure this out, we will tend to invest in careers and immigration for the industry of the past, not that of the future. Result: IT professionals will have trouble getting jobs while employers have trouble finding the people that they need.

Banks, insurance companies, manufacturers and retailers send IT projects to India, eastern Europe and the like to save money and gain access to talented resources. Technology companies globalize R&D activities, not only for cost reasons, but also to speed time to market and gain entry to hot markets like China. IT outsourcers increasingly tout a "global delivery model": trust us to parse out your projects to whatever geographies make the most sense.

Canada's national statistics only capture a portion of all this activity. We don't know what portion is being missed. It could be half or more.

The standard numbers come from Statistics Canada, illustrated in the above chart (from a research report for the Information & Communications Technology Council). It implies two things:

• First, Canada's got a healthy, stable - and positive - balance of payments in computer and information services. In other words, Canada sells more IT services to other countries than it buys.
• Second, despite the kerfuffle about offshoring, the numbers haven't changed much. The phenomenon, for whatever reasons, has not hit Canada's shores.

Based on this data, it's reasonable to conclude that - to coin a phrase - there's probably not much offshoring, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.

The problem is, there's all sorts of offshoring - both to and from Canada - that Statscan doesn't capture.

Statscan's questionnaire asks respondents to detail the value of services "sold to customers abroad" and "purchased from suppliers abroad". This request - at best - captures only those imports and exports that involve transactions between one company and another.

But lots of times, services are imported and exported within individual companies. And this phenomenon is on the increase. It is happening in two different ways:

• Companies move internal projects to more cost effective countries. For example, a Canadian bank acquires a US subsidiary and moves some projects to its Toronto IT operation. The bank also has a small office in Russia where it hires some math whizzes to design currency trading algorithms. None of this work is "sold to customers" or "purchased from suppliers" - abroad or otherwise - since it's all internal to the bank.

• Outsourcers sign deals in Canada with with Canadian companies; they perform some of the work here and send the rest offshore. This happens all the time. The supplier's contracting office is in Canada, not "abroad" - though its world headquarters might be in Montreal, San Jose, or Mumbai. The supplier's Canadian project management team is the interface to the Canadian customer. The hardcore programming - perhaps 90 percent of the work - is performed on the other side of the planet. According to Statscan definitions, the services are purchased from a domestic supplier, not from "a supplier abroad".

These two approaches are widespread. They may well add up to more than those in the official statistics. If we counted them, it's conceivable that the balance of payments story would be negative, rather than positive. Or not. At this point, no one knows the real story.

The flaw in the Statscan methodology is to assume that offshoring only entails dealings with external suppliers. I am sure that Statscan researchers are aware of the issue. But they are probably daunted by the challenges of collecting in-company data about the "import" and "export" of services. It's hard enough to collect questionnaire-based data on inter-company transactions. Definitions, consistency, and reliability are only three of the reasons that intra-company data collection would be a nightmare.

Example: When Canadians join members of a global project team to design a new technology solution, what part of this work is imported, and what part of it is exported? And how can Statscan expect Canadian companies to keep track of such phenomena?

Be that as it may, it would be helpful to get a bit closer what's really going on. Everything I've seen suggests that the demand architecture is changing.  Specifiable, commodity-like work is in relative decline, while the need for management and leadership skills is growing. CIOs say that offshoring is one important reason why.

Is this an issue? What do you think? Your comments welcome!

Thinking about my.... Coalition

As mentioned in a previous post, I've become heavily involved in something called the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's ICT Skills (CCICT). Well, in fact I am more than heavily involved. Since November, I've taken on the role of its Executive Director. This is a big change for me, the first time I've taken on such a role since I sold my company, Digital 4Sight, 8 years ago.

Digital 4Sight, and other work I've done before and after, focused on three things. One, coming up with big "thought leadership" ideas based on analyzing and articulating how changes in technology and media affect our lives, and in particular our business strategies. Two, global impact: we sought clients and influence globally, and largely outside Canada. Three: economic success - building high margin, profitable ventures for ourselves.

Over the past several years, all three of these priorities have been changing for me. Big ideas are all well and good. I still care about coming up with creative, accurate insights. But "cool hunting" and sloganeering - which seems to be a lot of what characterizes the digerati discourse - has lost its charm. I care more about figuring out the "what's going on" of hard, real life challenges and opportunities - with the hope of making whatever modest, tangible contribution I can to help make the world a better place.

In this respect, the second shift is to focus more on "where I live" - my family, Canada, my communities. For me anyway, making things better starts in an approximately local context.

As for the values, which were dominated by business economics in the earlier phase. My current model is to combine income with the ability to make a broader contribution, in accord with any unique abilities that I can bring to the table.

My work with the Coalition is a fine way to pull these objectives together. And it seems to become more timely by the day. If we are going to exit this economic  crisis, it's pretty clear that it will be on the basis of a "real world" economy - not the false economy of financial engineering. This real world economy will depend on - require - innovation. And in every field, information technology is at the centre of innovation. Consider the arts: if you want to design a new musical instrument, edit or distribute media, design and run an opera house, or create a leading edge art installation - you will not just "use" IT (as we use word processors), but you will innovate ITs in combination with innovating your genre-specific techniques and technologies.

This fact is true in every sector of our economy. Richard Florida's "creative economy" depends fundamentally on innovations in technology. Yet we in Canada, along with many other so-called advanced economies, are doing at best a mediocre job producing the human talent who will make these things happen. We don't just need computer science graduates. We need people who combine business knowledge, interpersonal, communications, and teamwork skills, project management - and technology. We also need multidisciplinary technologists - people who combine ITs with other specialized technical domains from molecular biology to music.

In Canada, we've experienced a 40% decline in computer science enrolments over the past several years. Newfangled programs that educate for those multiple skills I've just alluded to also face enrolment problems. Research we are doing at the Coalition (which I'll report on later) indicates that most high schools have no idea that we are into a new era of IT careers: an "IT careers 2.0", to coin a slogan. In fact most high school students are unsure what it means to have a career in this field at all!

Without the talent that we need, we aren't going to produce the innovations that we need. Instead we will import them from other countries, late in the cycle. This will be a barrier to economic recovery and growth, and limit our ability to invest in all the things we care about as a society, and as individual citizens and families.

So this means it's crucial to do three interrelated things: One, articulate the vision of IT Careers 2.o. Two, strengthen and build educational and workplace pathways to these careers. And three, get the message out to high school and college students.

This is what I hope to achieve.

Stimulus, innovation, and transformation

The stimulus decision hangs on three kinds of choices: tax cuts, industry support, and new (infrastructure) investment. Well designed tax cuts put money into the pockets of people who most direly need it; the money is quickly spent, helping out the spenders and stimulating the economy. Industry support aims to help weak sectors like the auto industry. It's risky, but justifiable if the sector is ready, willing and able to transform itself enough to stay alive.

The third, and most interesting option is infrastructure investment, which can be transformative, with long term positive effects. Canada's investments in new highways, hospitals, K-12 and post-secondary schools (colleges, CEGEPs and universities) during the 1950s and 1960s were the foundation of economic growth, prosperity, civility, and quality of life through the second half of the 20th century.

There is little real debate on these issues (see my previous post), but it's pretty clear that there are two kinds of possible agendas for this round of infrastructure investment (and for that matter sector and labour market support). One agenda is to repair and extend. The other is to transform.

Repair and extend focuses on long overdue repairs to highways, bridges and buildings; extensions of rapid transit; and helping - but not truly challenging - industries that are in trouble. This is fine, as long as you believe that the foundations of the economy over the coming decades won't change very much.

The premise of a transformation agenda is that the foundations will change. This is now the central premise of Barack Obama's spending agenda. The New York Times reports:

He said he aimed to double the production of alternative energy within three years, a seemingly ambitious target; computerize all medical records in the country within five years, a move he said could save lives, money and jobs; modernize 75 percent of federal buildings and improve energy efficiency in 2 million homes; upgrade classrooms, libraries and laboratories in thousands of schools, and expand broadband access to rural areas .

Obama's campaign presaged many of these initiatives. So from his perspective, if the government is going to open its pocketbook on infrastructure, it should focus on tomorrow's economy: health informatics, energy efficiency, next generation educational facilities, and universal broadband.

One thing is certain. For the next decade at least, major economies will focus far more on fundamentals (goods and services that meet real needs) than on abstractions (esoteric financial products). However, this happens in a context - the economic, physical, technological and human infrastructures that define what's possible. A transformational infrastructure investment along the lines of Obama's agenda creates a new context for the possible. If successful, it might well mean a sorely needed quantum advance in the competitiveness - and quality of life - of the United States.

Hopefully, Canada will rise to the occasion and adopt a comparable approach.

Canada's missing stimulus debate

It's inevitable that the stimulus package in the upcoming federal budget will be a bit of an eclectic grab-bag: credit loosening in the banking sector, money for the car industry, something for forestry (perhaps), and a passel of dough for infrastructure (the choices to be made here are tantalizingly interesting). Much of the discussion around these options has been exposed in the media. But, we know the givens (e.g., modeling the auto bailout on the US, loosening credit markets, and cutting taxes).

On the more meaty alternative choices, we've seen barely any public discussion - let alone debate.

For example, should we focus on roads and bridges -- or rapid transit? On fixing crumbling university buildings or on developing courses that prepare students for tomorrow's economy? Solar/wind energy, conservation, or smart electrical grids? Tax credits for technology investments or more widely accessible, next generation broadband networks? And of these, which will deliver the best payback?

Certainly, industry groups, lobbyists, bureaucrats and politicians are in deep discussion about such matters. But the public discourse is missing. This is unfortunate, not just because of the lack of transparency and citizen engagement. Arguably, in the absence of healthy public debate, the best choices are less likely to rise to the top.

The US provides a pretty good model for just such a discussion. It's far from perfect, and certainly incomplete. But many alternatives and choices are explicitly on the table, and being subjected to scrutiny and analysis. Partly, this is due to the fractious US congressional system, where consensus building happens more or less in public - rather than Canada's secretive budget process and system of parliamentary discipline. Also, the Obama campaign laid out an unusually detailed, aggressive program - one which turns out to be a highly articulated starting point for a crisis legislative agenda. This program is on the table - and, therefore, available for scrutiny, debate and ongoing tweaking.

One could, of course, argue that Canada's more top-down approach is one reason why it's in better shape than the interest-driven, sometimes chaotic US polity. There's no doubt a grain of truth in this. But at the same time, this guarded approach runs Canada the risk of missing out on some rather unique, timely opportunities. More on this to come.

What does the downturn mean for IT folks?

The recently released ICTC forecast of the next 7 years of the IT labour market, which I referenced in an earlier post, is already out of date on some key assumptions. It posits a Canadian dollar at $.95 US and expensive commodities - including oil above $90US per barrel. These would mean a sustained strong economy in Western Canada, and dollar-induced weaknesses in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Well, it now looks like a bit of a weaker economy in the oil patch. And, though the East could recover from the Dutch disease induced by the resource-driven high priced C$, the global economic crisis means that no relief is in sight.

Nevertheless, I personally expect us to see recovery by some time around a year from now. And when we do, the demand for "sunrise" knowledge-based talent will solidify, maybe even grow. So my bias is to stand behind the ICTC forecast of some 150,000 needed IT and communications professionals over the next seven years.

The IT talent paradox

In early September, itbusiness.ca reported on a speech I'd given at Toronto Tech Week. The report elicited several angry reader reactions, who questioned my logic, if not my sanity.

As the reporter put it, I'd said "Four years ago, I would have been talking to you about the threat of off-shoring. Today the number one concern for Canadian companies is where to find the IT talent that will help them grow their business."

The barrage of criticism came from a number of unemployed IT professionals, who said that they, and many people that they know, couldn't find jobs.

This is the IT talent paradox: On the one hand, employers can't find the people they need. On the other, many IT professionals can't get jobs.

The explanation? A profound skills mismatch. Many IT workers have specific technical skills for which demand is declining. Employers need people with a combination of technical and business skills - or advanced, multidisciplinary technical skills.

Put these facts together, and you reach two conclusions. First, there are lots of jobs in the field, and if anything they are getting more interesting. Second, traditional computer science education is simply not enough.

A recent report from the Information & Communications Technology Council (ICTC) bears this out. It says that over the next eight years, Canada may graduate and immigrate the 150,000 or so IT people that it will need. But they won't have the right skills.

The fastest growing IT occupation will be systems analysts who are the bridge between business needs and technology solutions. They are currently about a quarter of the IT labour force of 600,000 and will account for 26-28% of hiring needs. We don't have enough systems analysts today, and ICTC expects these shortages to persist.

The solution to the IT talent paradox is to tell high school students where the opportunities are, and for colleges and universities to add real world knowhow to their technology curricula.

Why is the IT labour market a big issue?

Canada’s information and communications technology (IT) industries – mainly computer hardware and software, telecommunications, and IT professional services – contribute $140 billion to Canada’s GDP. They conduct over $5.7 billion per year in on research & development – twice as much as any other sector and close to 40% of all business R&D spending. This is quite an accomplishment for an industry that represents 5.5% of GDP.

But that’s not all. IT is crucial to the success and productivity of every industry, be it media and culture, publishing, advertising, natural resources, financial services, health care, construction, retail or education. Such “user” industries employ over 225,000 IT professionals. These professionals are crucial to creativity, innovation, customer satisfaction, productivity, safety, and competitive advantage.

The IT industry plus IT professionals in other industries add up to nearly 1.1 million workers. Of these, 600,000 are IT professionals. This is a highly educated workforce: over two thirds have post-secondary education.

The challenge

A major shift is occurring. IT jobs are becoming increasingly complex, demanding and specialized. They are also becoming a lot more interesting, exciting, diverse, and relevant to Canada’s most pressing business and social challenges. In every field – from entertainment to health to the environment – IT is at the cutting edge of change and creativity. All this calls for a new kind of IT professional – more like a well-rounded Renaissance person than a traditional technologist.

Over the next eight years, Canada’s employers will hire about 150,000 new IT professionals in response to ongoing growth and employee retirements. But today, employers can’t find or hire the IT professionals they need. Some regions have lots of IT workers – but their qualifications don’t match the requirements. Other regions, particularly Alberta and Saskatchewan, face IT talent shortages across the spectrum – from technicians to programmers, engineers, consultants and managers.

• Everywhere, we need a blend of business, interpersonal, and IT capabilities. We have strong and growing demand for people who can fill key jobs in leadership and management, needs/solution analysis, and consulting.
• We need specialists who combine IT with other fields from media and the arts to financial analysis, life science, energy and environmental engineering. These individuals are crucial to innovation and competitiveness at the leading edge of many industries.
• Nationwide, we need more software engineers – the architects and designers who craft the blueprints for IT projects. Some regions face ‘niche’ skills challenges. Quebec, for example, faces a shortage of gaming, animation, and Web 2.0 specialists. The Atlantic Provinces need more .Net, Java, database, and legacy application programmers.

Because of these challenges, many projects have been postponed. Other IT professionals can’t be put to work. Productivity and performance suffer.
Demand for people with needed IT skills is high, and the pay is significantly above average. You would think that people would flock to these jobs. But the opposite is the case. 

• Young people have been turning away from IT-related post-secondary programs – in universities, colleges and CEGEPs across the country. During the past five years, programs have seen declines of 30-40% and more. Even business schools have problems attracting students into IT majors and combined programs.
• Girls are much less likely than boys to pick an IT-related career. Females are just one quarter of the IT labour force, and about one quarter of those enrolled in IT-related post-secondary programs.
• Demographics worsen the problem of declining enrolments. Growth in the age 15-19 population will peak in 2009.  Then, the size of this age group will continually fall.

Besides students, the other sources of IT workers are retaining and retraining existing employees, and newcomers from other countries (immigrants).

More to come on all this...

Information technology and Canada's future

For several years, I have been working on the issues of Canada's information & communications technology "labour market". That is, how well does the "supply" of IT workers map to the "demand" for such workers among employers. Since the dotcom crash of the early decade, the gap between supply and demand has widened, and it continues to widen. This is becoming a bit of a crisis, and I have gotten involved in several initiatives designed to tackle it.

I plan (or at least hope) to post a lot of items on this topic. So as background, and in the interest of disclosure, here are my main involvements in this arena:

• A large part of my time devoted to working with the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's ICT Skills (CCICT), an industry-led multistakeholder initiative focused specifically on this problem. The Coalition was founded under the leadership of Bell Canada in late 2007.
• Several years working with the Information & Communications Technology Council, a sector council that receives its main funding from the federal government. I chair the ICTC's Expert Panel, which plays a key role in developing the organization's research agenda.
• Over 10 years on the board of the Information Technology Association of Canada, an industry advocacy group. I am on ITAC's Talent Committee which is also focusing on this issue.

The CCICT is taking up the biggest chunk of my time at the moment.

My intent in this blog is to write about the issue from the perspective of the many stakeholders - including students, employees, employers, educators, parents, citizens, and governments.

More on free unlimited music and other stuff

One theme of this blog will be, how I think about using technology to enhance the enjoyment of life - cottage and otherwise - without necessarily falling into common mass market traps. For example, we hear very little about Internet radio in the media. This is not a big moneymaker for anyone (compared with satellite radio). Nor is it especially dependent on fetish objects (like the iPod). But in my opinion, it's better - and much cheaper (basically free).

As I write this I am in the gazebo at our cottage on Lake of Bays, listening to Roosevelt Sykes doing Dream Woman on KJAZZ, which operates out of the University of California in Long Beach, targeting the Los Angeles market. This is the joy - and value - of Internet radio.

You can listen to Internet radio directly on your computer. To hear it over your living room speakers you can plug it into your stereo: but if you live your life with a single laptop like I do, that's not very convenient. I prefer to use a dedicated Internet radio device that plugs into the stereo. The Roku is my device of choice. It's from a little privately held company in Saratoga, California.


The thing costs about $150US. You used to be able to buy it at Best Buy, but now, apparently, the company has given up on retail distribution, and sells direct only. This adds shipping (and cross border, if you live outside the US) costs, but IMO it's still worth it.

You can operate your Roku directly, via a remote. Or, your computer can "find" it through your WiFi network, and you access a Web page called Radio Roku that has a wealth of features for finding stations and getting them onto the Roku. You can browse a database of over 10,000 stations by name, genre, location or language. You can search by keyword. Both these capabilities also work on the standalone Roku, without needing your computer. But with the browser application - Radio Roku - you can customize the experience.

Radio Roku lets you pick a station and put it on a play list of 18 preferred stations or another list of "favorites". Once you've done this, the choices appear on the Roku device, and you can select them without any need for your computer to be involved. Radio Roku also lets users suggest new stations which, after moderator review, get added to the 10,000+ choices available. I suggested the Dylan station, Tangled Up in Bob - and it made it onto the catalog within hours. I also suggested Moses Znaimer's Classical 96.3 station - but several days later it continues to languish in limbo.

For cottage living, the Roku is one of those things that transforms the experience. I begin my day by catching the news on CBC 1, BBC, or NPR. I shower and shave (speakers in the bathroom) to the rock music. Then as the day progresses, we play jazz or classical from CBC 2, NPR, or one of several UK stations.

The jazz options are astonishing - we have an ongoing debate on what is the best station: JAZZ-FM (Toronto), WGBO (from New Jersey for the New York market), KCSM (San Mateo for the Bay Area) or KJAZZ (LA). To get outside the box, we check out jazz stations  from Argentina or Israel. 

The silence of the woods is wonderful. Other times, glorious music enhances the scene.