The human resources training quality for information, communications and technology (ICT) needs to be improved quickly amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution, said Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Phan Tam.

IT experts at BKAV. Viet Nam will need some 400,000 people in the IT sector during 2016-20.

Tam was speaking at a seminar on Viet Nam-Australia co-operation in ICT training in Ha Noi on Wednesday.

The event, co-organised by the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) and the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications, is a platform for universities, research organisations and companies of the two countries to exchange training experience and seek collaboration opportunities.

The Vietnamese Party and State defined ICT as an important part of infrastructure and an effective tool to create a new development model and a momentum for boosting the knowledge-based economy as well as improving the national competitiveness in the international economic integration.

Viet Nam has 250 universities and colleges in addition to 164 vocational training schools providing ICT training, with some 86,000 students. Relevant agencies in Viet Nam are actively seeking measures to raise the training quality in the field of ICT to create a new generation of workers with good knowledge and skills that can adapt to changes in the digital economic era, Tam said.

He hoped the experts would discuss about the challenges Viet Nam was facing in ICT human resources development amidst the impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Vu The Binh, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Internet Association, said Vietnamese firms were lacking some 80,000 people for software outsourcing as well as for the blockchain sector in 2018. Of this, HCM City and Ha Noi have the highest demand of human resources in ICT.

Small and medium-sized ICT companies especially have been hard to retain their human resources as a majority of the excellent students choose large foreign enterprises.

It is predicted Viet Nam will need some 400,000 people in the ICT sector by 2020. The Government has focused on increasing the number of highly skilled engineers, organising studies and supporting hi-tech start-ups as part of the science and technology development strategy in the 2011-20 period.

The Australian government is willing to co-operate and share experience with Viet Nam in seeking measures to adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), said Yvonne Chan, Australian deputy consul general to HCM City and senior trade commissioner of Austrade.

Chan believed that with the presence of leading IT experts from both the countries, the seminar would see the proposal of numerous IT development initiatives and solutions as well as partnerships between Vietnamese and Australian organisations.

At the seminar, participants discussed the impacts of Industry 4.0 on ICT human resources development in Viet Nam, ICT training demands, priorities and challenges of Viet Nam and innovative solutions to human resources quality improvement in the digital era in the country. — VNS