Experts are predicting a skills crisis.

As the public sector pursues more and larger technology programmes, the question of how the IT industry can find the capacity to deliver is becoming increasingly pertinent.

Evidence from the Institute for the Management of Information Systems' Skills Trends 2005 review, seen by Computing, suggests it will be a rocky year.

Signs that IT recruitment is recovering from the dot com collapse are clearly welcome in some respects. But because staffing levels were cut back so far in the lean times, there is a danger it won't take much of a recovery to lead to a serious shortage.

And a shortfall in higher-level programme management skills has serious implications, both for the success of the government's transformation strategies, and for the UK economy as a whole.

There needs to be serious, long-term commitment to building up the sector's high-level skills base.

In what is supposed to be a maturing industry, surely we should no longer be lurching from one skills shortage to the next, with nothing inbetween but a shower of redundancies?

An established industry means considered and continuous investment in a long-term skills base and a more flexible approach. And it means re-recruiting older people considered too expensive in the wake of the dot com collapse.

Both Ian Watmore, head of the IT profession at Whitehall's newly-created eGovernment Unit, and sector skills council eSkills UK are doing sterling work to put in place the infrastructure needed to support a healthy, well-skilled industry.

But success is not a foregone conclusion, and it cannot be achieved by the efforts of the few. It is the responsibility of everyone - government, suppliers, training providers, and major users.

Unless this can be achieved, the vision of the country's future as a world-leading knowledge economy is nothing but a pipe dream, and the UK will lose out to competitors from abroad.