Better training for IT professionals is to be a key priority in new government plans to support vital national skills.

The IT sector has this week been selected as one of the four pathfinders in the government's strategy for high-level training.

Sector skills council eSkills is to carry out a detailed analysis of employers' future training and productivity needs, and draw up a Sector Skills Agreement (SSA) with training providers to guarantee they are met.

'The government has said it will make contributions to higher level training where sectors can identify that they have skills shortage which are impacting on the progress of the sector and the economy, and the vehicle for that is the SSA,' eSkills chief executive Karen Price told Computing.

'The agreement will give employers real influence,' she said.

The scheme has potential but timescales will be critical because IT skills change so fast, says James Binks, senior policy advisor at the CBI.

'The SSA must be flexible enough for employers to change their needs. The danger for employers is it will all take too long and they will continue to use private training providers,' he said.

Timing will be crucial to meet the needs of the economic upturn, says John Eary, head of staff consultancy at NCC Group.

'The economy is picking up so there will be increased demand for professional IT skills - the trick is to identify them sufficiently in advance so the necessary training is in place,' he said.

'If this scheme had been in place a year ago we could have been preparing for the upturn, instead the upturn is already happening and we are just starting to address the current skills shortage.

'The concept of the SSA is good but employers may need to hedge their bets and ought to be doing some of their own work in parallel to make sure they are not caught out with a skills crisis before this scheme is in place.'