LVIV, Ukraine – Improving Ukraine’s credentials in the tech world and using IT to boost the economy were top of the agenda for discussion at the Lviv IT Arena conference on Sept. 30, attended by representatives of country’s biggest software outsourcers.
Sharing the results of the research initiated by the European Business Association, Olga Andrienko-Bentz, the director of strategy and operations at one of four big auditors, PwC, told conference attendees that Ukraine’s information technology sector could be capable of contributing 4.5 percent of country’s gross domestic product, and employing over 650,000 people throughout the country by 2020.
“Government should just listen to the industry players,” Andrienko-Bentz said during a panel devoted to discussing IT outsourcing. It should understand how to build IT as a business, otherwise it could “kill the industry,” she warned.
But Taras Kytsmey, cofounder at software developer SoftServe, said tech industry workers are still leaving Ukraine for the United States and Western Europe, and not just because of Ukraine’s ineffective government or economic turbulence. He said tech firms can do more themselves to increase the level of care for their employees.
“We shouldn’t just compare salaries, taxation, countries’ levels (of IT development). IT companies ought to give (tech professionals) more benefits,” Kytsmey said. “Then they will stay.”
The vice president for human resources and organizational development at software company Ciklum, Marina Vyshegorodskikh, agreed, adding that in general, Ukraine has everything it needs to continue developing at a fast rate.
“The future is brighter than we maybe thought a couple of years ago,” Vyshegorodskikh said.
Ex-CEO and cofounder at software developer ELEKS and now member of parliament Oleksiy Skrypnyk said IT has the potential to bring much more money into Ukraine’s budget, but the country should pay more attention to tech education.
“Science is dead in Ukraine,” Skrypnyk said. “Parliament and the government don’t understand the importance of tech education. Most our companies are now investing more in R&D than most of our universities do.”
He said that with more government support, Ukrainians could create real products and startups that would be able to triple the pace of the industry’s development, and contribute to the revival of the whole economy.
SoftServe’s Kytsmey agreed: “It’s important to understand what impact IT has on the country. It’s promoting western values of doing business. It is a new way to develop people. The IT industry should be the main focus of Ukraine.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Beetroot, Ciklum and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.
