Global IT sector growing despite economic climate

As part of the MoU signing with BUiD on 6^th May 2009, and to promote the new image of BCS internationally, Alan Pollard, BCS President, paid a visit to Dubai, which was organised and hosted by Engineer Adel Salem Alkaff, BCS Middle East Section Chairman.

According to the latest UK Research Assessment Exercise, BCS has been ranked number one in computer science offerings in the UK, ranked number one in IT offerings according to The Guardian newspaper in 2008, and achieved the top “Excellent” rating in the UK from the Teaching Quality Assessment Exercise.

Eng. Adel Salem Alkaff, Vice President, Commercial, GASCO and Founder & Chairman of the British Computer Society Middle East Section, discussed how industry experts have confirmed that the global IT sector is growing despite the economic downturn, resulting in graduate-level students choosing informatics programmes to advance their future careers. “The partnership between BUiD and BCS will enhance the information technology programmes offered by the university,” he added, while explaining how BCS aims to promote the study and practice of computing and to advance knowledge of and education in IT for the benefit of the public.

“The MoU signing with a leading, internationally-recognised organisation like BCS is a step towards achieving one of BUiD’s primary objectives of creating an informed population for the UAE and the rest of the Middle East,” said Dr Abdullah Alshamsi, Vice-Chancellor, The British University in Dubai.

“Through our association with BCS, we aim to provide students with the best informatics programmes in the region by offering key guidance from leaders in the field, and arranging ongoing workshops and seminars,” added Alshamsi.

The joint partnership between BUiD and BCS will provide access to BCS’ pool of professional members from world class universities, and offer guidance for future developments in the IT sector by sharing information, providing training, certification and consulting on program updates.

The Faculty of Informatics at BUiD offers Master programmes in IT and IT in Management and is already a partner with the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. BUiD’s academic staff at the Faculty of Informatics undertake internationally-recognised, quality research in various areas of informatics, which include: expert systems, Artificial Intelligence, information extraction, Arabic teaching software, data mining and machine learning, multi-agent systems, semantic web technologies, electronic commerce, mobile computing, and health informatics among other offerings.

“BCS has a longstanding reputation for developing leaders in the IT industry. Our partnership with BUiD will help build on the growth and status of informatics professionals across the Middle East and at the same time provide the region’s growing IT sector with bright candidates for future success,” said Alan Pollard, President, British Computer Society.

He added: “We recognise that these days information spans every aspect of society. Computing is a tool that is now used by so many different professions that it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify where an IT profession ends and another starts. A very good example of this is the health sector.”

BCS believes in the need to promote professionalism right across the whole spectrum of the knowledge society. “We believe we have a lot to offer,” continued Pollard. “ BCS is a charity. That means we have certain obligations; we have to demonstrate that we are delivering, what we call, public benefit. This is best summed up in our tagline ‘enabling the information society’.”

Pollard highlighted the need to use information reliably, ethically, correctly and professionally: “Key to that professionalism is education. We need qualifications that are internationally recognised.” Eng. Alkaff reiterated the benefits of industry qualifications and how they would benefit IT professionals in this region: “This will provide much greater mobility in terms of work and employment anywhere in the world.” He added that BCS Middle East was proactively encouraging professionals to take advantage of their regional initiatives: “We would like to drive more awareness of BCS in the region to further our cause. Our Middle East website provides information on our regional initiatives, and the different types of memberships and qualifications.”

Pollard admitted that, till recently, BCS was primarily a UK-based organisation, “but we are developing our regional presence in many countries now.” Another challenge is to attract the younger generation. Pollard discussed how the average age of CIOs is getting younger by the day and unless formal bodies recognise that, they will become dinosaurs. “We are working on how we position ourselves and how we incorporate any and every technology to enable us to get our message out. For example, I write a blog and am on LinkedIn and Twitter, as are many of our members,” he concluded.