Penza, 22 April 2016. PenzaNews. The shortage of manpower became the main topic of the roundtable discussion “IT Education: New Forms For New Content” during the 8th interregional software developers conference “Secon” held at the Lermontov Penza regional library on Friday, April 22.

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In the opening of the discussion, Sergei Matyukin, assistant general director of the Center of Cluster Development, reminded other participants that the region has a strong active IT cluster of 15 organizations, including software companies, maintenance service providers, IT R&D and educational organizations, and development institutes.

According to him, the companies of the cluster have the capabilities to join forces to resolve the relevant issues in the field, including the shortage of manpower.

“We are holding a series of educational events as part of our work with educational institutions,” he explained, listing IT-Laboratory, HackDay and “Secon” as the more successful examples.

As Sergei Matyukin pointed out, the region has created the infrastructure nesessary to support IT companies.

“These include techoparks and business incubators that have quite a few residents. The business incubators, in particular, have many new IT companies,” he said.

In turn, Mikhail Lyashkov, general director of the Center of Cluster Development, pointed out that his Center closely cooperates with the IT community and seeks to provide resources to support their business initiatives as often as possible.

In turn, Vladimir Rozov, general director of Bit.Games, pointed out that IT companies in Penza already achieved significant success, yet the results could have been even better with additional support from the regional authorities.

As an example of correct treatment of the IT field, he mentioned the experience of the Ulyanovsk region, where software and hardware developers bring up to 2 billion rubles of annual tax income.

“It has 150 IT companies. The average salary there is 50,000 rubles. This is two times more than the Ulyanovsk region average. […] Recently, it introduced a program to subsidize mortgage downpayments for the staff of IT companies: the government of the region provides 150,000 rubles as a mortgage downpayment, and the employee’s company gives the same sum,” Vladimir Rozov pointed out.

Describing the successes of the IT in Penza in detail, he announced that the annual turnover of Otkrytye Rescheniya and CodeInside companies has increased by 10 times; one of the apps produced by FunCorp reached the top 10 by popularity in the United States; the app Avataria by Tortuga holds a leading position in the VK.com social network; the Domovyata app by Bit.Games continues to enjoy long-time popularity in Odnoklassniki social network; and Moye Delo is the leading e-accounting service in Russia.

“We could develop well even further, but we have one crucial obstacle. […] We cannot do everything we want because we are short on manpower,” Vladimir Rozov stressed.

Valery Bespalov, deputy chairman of the Penza region government, disagreed with some of the notions.

He reminded the that Russian Ministry of Communications maintains a registry of IT companies that has more entries from the Penza region compared to the Ulyanovsk region, and only the companies in the registry are eligible for state benefits.

Moreover, Valery Bespalov expressed his doubt over the notion that other regions of the Volga Federal District allegedly provide better support to the IT compared to the Penza region.

“This is just one big fairy tale, one big piece of propaganda. I was in Ulyanovsk a year ago with the Russian Minister of Industry Denis Manturov and the Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy in the Volga Federal District Mikhail Babich. While there, the governor Sergei Morozov claimed they had created an industry development fund. But at that time, the Ulyanovsk region did not have a single document that would mention an industry development fund. Telling tales is easy,” he stressed.

To return the roundtable discussion back to the topic, Maxim Semenkin, chairman of Secon software developers association and head of CodeInside, pointed out that the IT business in Penza has great potential for growth that would not shun support.

In particular, the officials must understand the potential of the field, said the general director of Rosoperator company Oleg Zvonov.

“We know how much the agricultural field gives us. But what does the IT field give us? Let’s make it an objective for us to calculate that,” he suggested.

Touching upon the manpower issue once again, Valery Bespalov announced that the regional authorities will demand heads of universities to set up relevant programs of education.

“And the professors for those subjects must have their salaries ranging not from 7,800 rubles, but at least from 40,000 rubles and more. How exactly they will be achieving this is not our problem. They have a great variety of sources to do that. If they are not going to do that, finding a new man to head a university would not take much time, trust me, while finding a replacement IT professional is quite hard,” stressed the deputy chairman of the regional administration.

In conclusion of the roundtable discussion, the participants outlined the main points of cooperation in the future, including on the manpower issue.