Skill development in IT sector through Future Skills PRIME

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Electronics and IT, approved expansion of the Future Skills initiative to industry professionals across different segments, higher education students and government officials, with the goal to train 4 lakh professionals in the next three years. This expanded digital platform would be called Future Skills PRIME (Programme for Reskilling/ Upskilling of IT Manpower for Employability). The Union Minister on this occasion said, “In the digital world trained workforce will become India’s biggest competitive advantage”.

The Government of India will invest Rs. 436 Crore over a period of three years on this initiative. Each learner will get a Skills Passport and a Skills Wallet. Skills Passport will contain the competencies acquired by the candidates and Skills Wallet will contain the incentive of 12,000 from the government of India upon certification.

By 2030 Indian will have more than 90 million people joining the workforce due to its existing demographic dividend. India will become the largest workforce in the world by 2030. Indian IT giants have been investing over Rs. 1,000 Crore per year to address the reskilling/ upskilling requirements of their employees given the magnitude of the challenges.

Keeping this in mind the Government had made a strong commitment to drive skilling at scale of our citizens and youth. The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had announced the Future Skills Initiative in February 2018 at Hyderabad to reskill the IT industry workforce in emerging technologies and job roles.

Speaking on the occasion, Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, said, “It is phenomenal to see the Government taking on such a huge initiative and recognising the imperative of skilling in our industry today. The common objective we share is to showcase India as the global hub for talent development in emerging technologies as well as globally recognized process structures. I am confident that such an initiative will significantly contribute to building a future-ready workforce and accelerate the technology sector in achieving its skilling targets for the country.”

This digital platform is being developed in partnerships with the IT Industry, academia and government. The existing infrastructure of CDAC and NIELIT centers will be used as resource centers in the hub and spoke model.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT and NASSCOM have worked with the IT industry to reskill/ upskill over 200,000 IT employees leveraging the Future Skills platform. The Future Skills platform currently offers reskilling/ upskilling in 10 emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Blockchain, etc. across 70 new job roles and 155 new skills.

Related article: Future skills and jobs: Why colleges have to focus on work-integrated learning? https://www.nationalskillsnetwork.in/future-skills-and-jobs-why-colleges-have-to-focus-on-work-integrated-learning/

The Government is committed to work with the IT Industry and NASSCOM to create India Digital Talent Stack that will propel India into a leadership position in the digital world.With the aim to upskill/reskill over 4 lakh IT professionals in emerging technologies, Future Skills PRIME will be one of the largest government led digital skilling initiative globally.

(Source: NASSCOM)