Over the past time, Da Nang has achieved many remarkable results in digital transformation. However, the lack of digital transformation human resources, or digital human resources, is the city’s matter of deep concern.

Such fields as AI and Blockchain expected to have high demand have not been trained much in Da Nang. IN THE PHOTO: Employees working at the FPT Software Da Nang Co., Ltd. Photo: C.T

Lack of human resource supply

As of June 2023, Da Nang has 2.3 digital tech enterprises per 1,000 people, ranking second in the country after Ho Chi Minh City, more than three times the whole country’s average rate of 0.7 digital tech enterprises/1,000 people. The total number of information technology (IT) human resources in the city is about 47,500 people, accounting for 7.7% of the total number of local employees.

The Da Nang government has issued a plan on developing IT human resources for digital transformation in Da Nang until 2025.

According to the plan, by 2025, the number of digital technology enterprises will reach 3 enterprises/1,000 people, creating at least 75,000 high-quality workers. By 2030, the number of digital technology enterprises will be at least 5 digital technology enterprises/1,000 people, offering at least 115,000 high-quality workers.

Thus, the city sets a target of the proportion of digital human resources in the total workforce aged 15 years and over being 10.3% by 2025 (the national average is 2.83%) and 13, 7% by 2030 (the national average is 4.78%). The city needs to add at least 7,500 workers per year in the 2022-2025 period, and 8,000 people per year in the 2026-2030 period.

It can be seen that there is a surge in demand for digital human resources. According to data released by the municipal Department of Information and Communications, the city currently has 38 training institutions in the field of IT, including 20 universities and colleges and 18 intermediate schools, vocational training centers and non-governmental training centers. In 2022, there were about 6,000 enrollment quotas for IT major.

Assoc.Prof.Dr. Le Thanh Bac, Deputy Director of the University of Da Nang, said that there is an imbalance between the "supply" and "demand" of digital human resources. The main reason is thought to be that the trend of digital transformation in businesses has developed strongly since the emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, leading to a surge in demand for human resources to do digital transformation jobs such as e-commerce, artificial intelligence, Big Data, IoT, VR/AR, and blockchain. Meanwhile, the increase in training targets and scale from universities requires preparation time in terms of staff, facilities conditions, and at least 4 years of university-level training.

For a clearer analysis, universities cannot sharply increase enrollments in the IT field to meet social needs because they must comply with the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training in determining enrollment quotas to meet the needs of society and ensure the quality assurance of training. Besides, in order to increase the enrollment quota, it is necessary to increase the number of lecturers in the IT field.

In fact, in recent years, the recruitment of lecturers for IT fields has always faced difficulties. Those who have enough IT qualifications are highly paid by private enterprises and have a favourable working environment, so they do not choose a university to teach.

Multidisciplinary universities cannot convert or increase their quotas too much in the IT field to ensure a balanced career structure.

Quality of human resources is not guaranteed

In addition to the shortage of digital human resources in terms of quantity and quality. According to the Viet Nam IT market report in 2022 published by the IT job platform TopDev, only 35% of the 57,000 graduates from the IT major meet the requirements of recruiters.

According to Mr. Vy Van Viet, Vice Chairman of Da Nang Software Business Association, the quality of digital human resources is not guaranteed due to many reasons. For instance, the areas expected to have high demand such as AI and Blockchain have not been trained much in universities or colleges. Along with that, the majority of IT engineers tend to be satisfied with their current jobs, while management-level human resources are always lacking.

According to Assoc.Prof.Dr. Le Thanh Bac, in fact, the connection between training institutions and businesses has been established by many cooperation documents, but the results are not high. Some graduates have yet to meet the needs of teachers.

Enterprises mainly select a number of good and excellent graduates without really long-term investment in training. As a result, the effective supply and use of IT human resources have still wasted. Enterprises have not made many contributions to innovation in university governance and cooperation, and the improvement of training quality. At the same time, the role of management agencies in the relationship between schools - enterprises has not been clearly shown.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Thach, Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Communications, assessed that, in general, IT human resources in State agencies have yet to be guaranteed to implement digital transformation.

From now to 2025, with a vision to 2030, digital transformation is an urgent issue that requires a long-term vision from State agencies and units to increase the number of IT human resources for the city, and improve the quality of human resources.

Reporting by M.QUE, C.THANG - Translating by M.DUNG