The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the country's apex software organisation, has initiated steps to set up the Institute of Computer Software Professionals in India (ICSPI) across the country. This will be an apex body for which the government has already allocated Rs 5 crore as seed money.
Decision to involve private funding and participation will be routed through Nasscom. Nasscom is currently preparing a detailed project report which will be ready by October.
The institute is expected to start in the 1999-2000 academic year.The initiative is part of the government's effort to understand the requirement of software workforce, by the industry, in the next five years. ICSPI would be an autonomous organisation run by industry experts with representatives from the government and academicians on its governing council. It will be open to all age groups. The ICSPI will be headquartered in Delhi.
The move to set up ICSPI is aimed at providing additional 10,000 quality software professionals by 2003. "The basic idea and concept comes from the success of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India," said Dewang Mehta, executive director of Nasscom and spokesperson of the National IT Taskforce on Information Technology and Software Development.
The basic syllabus for the main two-year course is expected to be set in consultation with the industry and would be continuously updated. It would provide training at the institute's national headquarters and regional centres and also at remote locations in the country with the help of television and by using high speed datacom technology.
The institute is expected to churn out over 20,000 professionals per year by 2005. "In order to increase manpower supply in the near future, computer courses need to be introduced in every engineering discipline in the country," Mehta said.
"Nasscom has already convinced the government to start the bridge courses with immediate effect to augment the manpower needs of the software industry," he added. The intial findings of the Nasscom study report showed that the number of software professionals in the industry had increased to two lakh in 1997-98 from 1.6 lakh the preceding year; almost 70 per cent of the software professionals employed in the industry were in software development, 10 per cent in marketing, 14 per cent in support and six per cent in other activities.
