TECHNOLOGY-GERMANY: Lagging Behind In IT Expertise

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN, Mar 23 2001 (IPS) - Though Germany is hosting the world’s largest computer and communications technology fair CeBIT, which is a window on the world of tomorrow, the country lags behind in skilled human resources to keep pace with rapid digitalisation.

Germany is Europe’s economic and fiscal powerhouse, as well as its largest populated nation, and the world’s second largest exporting nation. Besides, Germany leads the world in high-speed ISDN data lines.

In fact, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder himself addressed the issue in a speech opening the fair that began Mar 22, and ends Mar 28. A record 8,106 companies from 62 countries – including those from Asia, Africa and Latin America — are attending the fair.

They include Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.

Schroeder said one way out of the shortage of information technology (IT) experts in Germany was the broadening of the “green card” legislation.

Germany introduced the green card on Aug 1 last year, after a rigorous debate. It is purported to lure IT experts outside the 15- nation European Union to work in Germany for up to five years. The foreigners’ response has, however, been lukewarm. Between August last year and beginning of March, no more that 6,000 IT specialists have moved to Germany. The government’s target was 20,000.

According to official statistics, India takes the lead among foreign IT experts in Germany, followed by Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic countries and Romania.

The German Chancellor cautioned, however, that the green card was only “one step” and that other measures needed to follow. Schroeder signalled that the five-year limitation could be dropped. Not only trained specialists, but also students from foreign countries should receive special working and residence permits, he added.

In this he is backed by the German industry, which is anxious about its competitiveness on international markets.

Ahead of the opening of CeBIT, a survey sought to allay apprehensions that foreign IT experts might snatch jobs from Germans, nearly 4.5 million of them being already without work. The poll conducted by the market research agency Wimmex, the business magazine Impulse and the German Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises, said six months after the green card programme was launched, 12,500 new jobs were created for German nationals.

“The green card programme is turning more and more into a job machine for small and medium-sized companies,” says the confederation’s president Mario Ohoven.

However, demand from companies for information technology specialists is still far from satisfied. Estimates are that as many as 42,000 vacancies in IT jobs may have to be filled in the next 12 months. This, in turn, will create 76,000 new jobs for the German workforce itself.

But finding new specialists is proving to be difficult. There are still 14,000 vacant positions in Germany’s IT sector.

“Germany’s competitors advertise faster, more skillfully and they offer more generous conditions for green card applicants,” adds Ohoven.

The confederation of small and medium-sized enterprises, headed by Ohoven, is calling for the eliminations of the five-year restriction for green card holders.

It also wants to have the wage limit of 46,000 US dollars a year for IT skilled workers without a university degree.

Coupled with the shortage of IT experts is that Germans lag behind their neighbours in adopting the tools of the new economy. Germany ranks 11th among “new economy leaders”, says Merril Lynch, a U.S.-based financial management and advisory company that operates on a global scale.

Germany trails behind Britain, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland in Personal-computer (PC) penetration, according to a survey. Thirty-four PCs per 100 inhabitants put Germany below the European average of 28.4 per cent, says the Institute for German Economy. The number of German- registered Internet domains lags behind those of 11 other European countries.

In terms of the importance of IT in the German economy, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last year ranked the country in the bottom third of its 29 member countries.

However, backed by the German industry’s D-21 lobbying group, the German government has taken several measures to redeem the situation.

Chancellor Schroeder has launched a ten-point ‘Internet for All’ programme. More than 36,000 out of a total of around 40,000 schools are now connected to the Internet, reports Germany federal government’s press office. By mid-2001 all schools will have access to the Internet.

At the CeBIT, the German Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, presented the wealth of information the German government has already made available through its “e-Government” initiative. He launched a new portal www.bund.de, unveiling its vision of the future of government and administration.

“There is no better tool for administrative reform than e- government,” said Schily, launching the new portal. “The idea is not a leaner state, but a more active state.”

Chancellor Schroeder has promised that by 2005 all Internet compatible services that the federal government offers would be available electronically.