The average annual growth rate of the country's IT workforce has slowed from to 12.5% or 4,200 entrants each year between 2006 and 2009 from 25% or 4,800 entrants each year between 2003 and 2006, according to a national level IT workforce survey of 510 organisations carried out in 2010 by Sri Lanka's Information and Communications Agency (ICTA).
 As at end-2010, the IT workforce was estimated as having a growth rate of 17% per year.
The 2010 survey also predicted there would be a little more than 50,000 people employed as part of the IT workforce by end-2010, a growth of 7,338 entrants over the end-2009 figure, with 56% of this growth comprising IT sector jobs, 29% non IT sector IT jobs, 8% in government IT jobs and 7% in Back Process Outscourcing, or BPO, IT jobs. The survey also showed that, sector-wise, at end-2009, the overall IT workforce was distributed according to 49% non IT sector, 42% IT sector, 5% government and 4% BPO.
Also emerging in the survey, programming and software engineering accounts for the highest percentage of workers in the IT workforce with these being 25% of all IT positions, while technical support was second highest at 17% and system and network administrators was third highest at 11%. The smallest groups in terms of IT careers were digital media and animation workers, technical writers and IT researchers, each at 1%, and solutions and technical architects (2%) and web developers (3%). Further noted, between 2006 and 2009, management information systems and IT management workforce growth rates rose from 5% to 9%, while systems and network administration workforce growth rates went up from 7% to 11%. However at the same time, the numbers of software quality assurance workers fell due to a contraction in the growth rate, to 7% in 2009, compared to 13% in 2006.
 The survey also concluded that the average attrition rate across the entirety of the IT workforce was 7%, while the brain drain was 4%. It however also concluded that IT sector specific attrition was also much higher than that the IT workforce average, at 11%. In addition, the survey also predicted that, for the third year running, demand for IT workers would fall short of supply, with 3,970 IT graduates hired out of 4,473 graduating in 2010 (estimated). Comparable figures for 2008 and 2009, respectively, were 3,758 IT graduates in that year, and 3,039 employed, and 3,941 IT graduates in that year, with 2,602 recruited.
Meanwhile, average salary scales for new recruits ranged from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000 across all sectors. At the same time, as per the survey, maximum entry level salaries were reported as being around Rs. 60,000 for database administrators, systems ad network administrators and programmers / software engineers in the IT and non IT sectors.
The same positions had around a Rs. 40,000 maximum entry level salary in the government sector. This is in a pool where a Bachelor's Degree is the preferred minimum academic qualification identified as being required by employers. On the other hand, in the BPO sector, where 43% of the workers have GCE A/L qualifications, 24% have diplomas, 15% have professional qualifications (CIMA, etc.) and only 13% and 2.5% have Bachelor's and Master's Degrees, respectively; salary scales for employees range between Rs. 10,000 and Rs. 300,000 (for executive managers), with junior managers earning a maximum of Rs. 60,000, managers Rs. 100,000 and senior executives Rs. 150,000. Also indicated, IT salaries increased at a faster pace with experience, particularly in the IT sector, while government sector salaries, even with experience, rose at a much slower pace when compared with other sectors.
 At the same time, and maybe contributing to lower hiring, most organisations in the IT, non IT and BPO sectors pointed to specific soft skills (team working, English proficiency, communications and presentation, creative thinking, etc.) as being important in recruitment, with employers also stating that the above identified soft skills were lacking in employees, with communication being the most lacking. Further, BPO sector employers identified a lack of technical skills and a positive attitude as being most important, and the most lacking in new recruits.
Regarding IT's role in business, the survey also noted that nearly 90% of IT and BPO companies use IT for back office operations as well as business with customers (B2C), while the usage for IT for both of these purposes by the other two sectors ranges between 52% and 64%. Also stated, 85% of respondents use IT for financial management, 60% for human resource management and 52% for inventory management in their day-to-day back office operations. Additionally, 63% of organisations using IT for business with customers use it for customer service / help desk type functions, 62% for information gathering and marketing, and 57% use websites as promotional tools. Further, more than 95% of IT and BPO sector companies and 90% of government organisations have websites, with 86.7% of all Sri Lankan websites being in English while 30% of government websites are in all three official languages.
The survey also noted that data suggested limited electronic commerce adoption with the majority of adoption shown to be in Internet marketing, also that high cost of infrastructure followed by high cost of bandwidth were the major barriers to using electronic commerce for B2C. Elaborating, the survey also revealed that 44% of BPO companies and 28% of IT companies had obtained secured transaction certificates (SSl, TLS, etc.). This number was 6% for government sector organisations. |
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