The concept was developed to meet the deficit of qualified specialists for the fast-growing software industry in the country.
Analysеs undertaken by the Ministry of Labour and Social Economics, the Ministry of Economics, and professional organisations warn of a serious deficit of software specialists in Bulgaria. The project uses results provided by the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies and the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologiesshowing that “until 2015 the deficit of software developers exceeds 20 000 while the need of specialists in related professions in the field of marketing, management, and sales is around 5000 persons.”
Another research by the Ministry of Economics was held for the purposes of the National Strategy for SMEs Development and aimed to identify the deficit of specialists in the SMEs in the IT and information services sectors. The results show that in order for Bulgaria to achieve a structure similar to the countries of comparison (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia) the SMEs share in these sectors should be 4 times larger than it is now.
The software specialists in Bulgaria are being educated in two professional fields: “Telecommunication Technologies Engineering” and “Informatics and Computer Science”. According to the Ministry of Education’s data for 2014 only three universities in Bulgaria managed to achieve 100% occupation in these courses:Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Technical University, Sofia, and University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”.
The concept focuses on increasing the number of candidates to enrol for IT courses as well as improving the quality of the education offered in these courses.
To achieve that, several interventions are suggested:
Introduction of extra- curriculum secondary school IT classes recognized as relevant experience by higher education institutions
Boosting the capacity of public universities
Career advisory for undergraduates
Provision of efficient funding for ICT faculties within the universities
Advancing the qualification of undergraduate teachers in Mathematics
Widening the opportunities for professional qualification in Information Technologies
Development of vocational schools in the field of computer science
Development of IT-related courses
Strategy implementation and establishment of Advisory Board for ICT education
You could find full information on Council of Ministers’ project concept here (Available in Bulgarian only).