ITSS in deal with Japanese agency to boost Thai IT skills
THE Association of Thai ICT Industry has struck a mutual cooperation agreement with the Japanese to promote skill standards and improve human resources among IT professionals in Thailand.
The association's plan is to encourage Thailand to adopt the Skill Standards for IT Professionals (ITSS) by signing with the Japanese Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) to promote the ITSS framework in Thailand.
Specifically, ITSS is a set of systematic indices that clarify and arrange the skills needed for people working in the IT services industry.
It is chosen as a tool for developing professional human resources so they can adopt corporate strategies.
Organised into a career framework, ITSS classifies the information services industry into 11 job categories and 35 specialty fields. In each field, there are seven levels based on individual experience and results. One appealing feature of ITSS is that this standard allows engineers to draw roadmaps for their own futures and career advancement (career path).
Adopting the ITSS, business managers and engineers - for example - can systematically consider both their own and the future of their respective companies. In Japan alone, 90 per cent of large enterprises and over 60 per cent of SMEs have introduced or are considering using ITSS.
In Thailand, ATCI will be a local partner of IPA to promote ITSS. Thanachart Numnonda, ATCI's president said that ATCI has been trailing the cooperation with IPA for a year. It had succeeded in getting eight corporations to adopt the ITSS framework: CDG Group, Net Way, Net bay, Pro One, MST, Prompt Now, eCartstudio, and Summit Computer.
In 2016, ATCI aims to encourage 20 more companies to adopt the ITSS framework.
To promote the framework, it is working with three consultancies to provide the consultant and implementation services.
Potential markets for the ITSS framework are in banking, financial, insurance, retailing, energy, education, and government.
"The adoption of ITSS will implement the framework for IT professional skill standards and IT professional career paths. We promote ITSS because ITSS has been chosen in seven countries in the ASEAN region to standardise and facilitate the flow of IT professionals among the region, said Thanachart.
A time to implement the ITSS depends on size and complexity of the IT system in the company. It can take six months or up to a year.
ATCI will also promote ITPE for students, school, and companies and the ITSS Career Framework for companies.
Apart from promoting the ITSS, IPA has also joined hands with the National Science and Technology Agency (NSTDA) to arrange the information technology professional examination (ITPE) to courage Thai IT professionals to get certification.
Sirichai Kittivarapong, director of NSTDA Academy, said there were some 3,000-4,000 IT professionals involved in ITPE each year. The ITPE exams are twice a year, in April and October, at the same time across seven countries in ASEAN.
"We have been working with universities throughout Thailand to promote the ITSS and to host the ITPE for many years," said Sirichai.
Hisaya Tanaka, vice chairman of IPA. In Japan, there are around 400,000 IT professionals taking ITPE each year.
"IPA will support ATCI by providing and exchanging information about ITSS and human resource development," said Tanaka.
IPA is an independent administrative institution established by the Japanese statute 'Law on Facilitation of Information Processing' funded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI).
IPA encourages software development, develops human resources in the domain of information technology, and provides information regarding information security.
