ICT Capacity Building for World Bank

CIVITTA Belarus has completed an 8 month-long project for the World Bank on information and communications technology (ICT) capacity building in Belarus. Our consultants have created a self-sustainable ICT cluster, located in the leading local university, and developed an innovative 2-year master-level curriculum for IT specialists.

The team has evaluated Belarusian ICT industry and developed recommendations that provide transformation of Belarusian IT market from mostly outsourcing services to product development by setting up a benchmark, which helped identify the advantages and drawbacks of the industry.

One of the main objectives of the project was to find out what is preventing the Belarusian IT sector from making a rapid shift from the less efficient outsourcing model to the product model, and which skills the local workforce lacks in implementing such qualitative changes. The study assessed the gap that exists between the demand and supply of qualified human resources in the IT and high-technology sector in Belarus and contributed to the further sustainable growth of the Belarusian ICT industry.

The final phase of the project was aimed at providing an overview of the key features of the proposed BSU ICT cluster and designing the master-level curriculum for IT specialists. The relevance of opening the training program in “Complex Integrated Systems Design” is also confirmed by the assessment of experts from the World Bank, which granted technical and financial aid to support the opening of a new major on the basis of the ICT cluster of BSU on complex integrated systems design including the development of appropriate organizational and business models and programs.

World Bank management has highly appreciated the work conducted and decided to publish both the Benchmarking and Skills Gap reports as official World Bank reports: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/313561545138144128/pdf/FINAL-IT-Skill-Gap-Analysis-ENG.pdf