ICT SPECIALISTS - A NECESSARY RESOURCE IN ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVES OF SMART SPECIALIZATION STRATEGIES

In the current context in which Romania elaborates the National Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization, based on the Regional Strategies for Smart Specialization, we consider important to highlight the role that ICT specialists can play in developing and ensuring the enterprises competitiveness. In fact, almost all the development regions of Romania (South-Muntenia, South-East, North-West, North-East, Bucharest-Ilfov, South-West Oltenia) have delimited ICT as a distinct field of smart specialization, within their own Regional Strategies. This paper mainly aims a quantitative descriptive research of the Key Indicators regarding the ICT specialists, from Romania and from the European Union, respectively: Enterprises employing ICT specialists, Enterprises reporting hard-to-fill vacancies for jobs requiring ICT specialist skills, Persons Employed with ICT Specialist Skills (broad measure), Enterprises where ICT functions are mainly performed by external suppliers, Enterprises provided training to their personnel to develop/upgrade their ICT skills, Individuals who have obtained ICT skills through formal educational institutions, Individuals who have written a computer program using a specialised programming language. We consider that the comparative analysis of these indicators represents the starting point in establishing the specific measures targeting the ICT field.