Irish information technology training programme for the long-term unemployed has become an international role model for how to design and manage a community employability scheme, writes Karlin Lillington

An Irish information technology training programme for the longterm unemployed which began in Ballymun in 1998 has become an international role model for how to design and manage a community employability scheme.

This week, Peter Davitt, the chief executive of FIT - Fastrack to IT - was on his way to Redmond, Washington, to give a presentation to Microsoft executives at an in-house global conference. He'll be telling them about a programme that has taken thousands of people off the Live Register and moved them into skilled jobs in technology.

Microsoft plans to use the project as a template for its international offices to launch similar schemes, says FIT chairwoman and Microsoft Ireland's human resources director, Anna Pringle.

"FIT has been identified as a best practice project. It fits exactly into Microsoft's current focus on employability as part of its corporate social responsibility remit."

Though initially established in Ballymun as a Microsoft initiative called Tramlines, a pet project of Microsoft's former country manager Ann Riordan, FIT has since become an independent organisation.

It has board representation from many of the key technology and IT-using companies in Ireland and many national agencies - among them Ibec, HP, Dell, Skillsoft, Symantec, Oracle, Eircom, IBM and AOL Technologies. Riordan also retains a board slot.

In its first year, FIT produced 25 graduates from what was to be a once-off experiment, but the decision was made to try a second 25, says Davitt.

At the time, the programme was seen as a way of addressing the extreme shortage of skilled IT employees, a worry that was top of many technology company agendas' in 1998.

Despite the economic downturn after 2000, which eased demand somewhat, FIT continued to grow and thrive, with its initial four course offerings expanding to 19 full-time offerings.

The programme spread to other parts of Dublin, then around the State and has now seen 5,000 people in Ireland pass through.

Some 3,000 of those are in employment directly as a result of their coursework and 600 more are in further education and training, many doing third-level courses in computing, he says. Many now teach the subjects they learned through FIT.

And 47 per cent of graduates are women - a far higher female representation than IT courses generally can claim.

"The vast majority of these people wouldn't have come forward for IT training or ever envisaged themselves working in the areas they are now," says Davitt, who formerly ran the jobs centre in Ballymun and was involved with Tramlines from the beginning.

He adds that, thanks to FIT, Ballymun now has the highest number of MCPs - Microsoft Certified Professionals - for any region in Europe.

Both Pringle and Davitt attribute the success of the programme to its joint industry and community involvement. FIT offers companies an opportunity to satisfy a community service responsibility but also provides highly-trained, in-demand employees back into industry.

"FIT meets the needs of industry, but also helps in the community," says Pringle.

"It makes good business sense," says Davitt. "And if you do a cost/benefit analysis, there's huge returns to the State. We're getting unemployed people in from the cold.

"Companies get involved because of thinking with their head, but they stay for the heart. For a very minimal investment, they see people's lives transformed."

Participants need only a natural aptitude rather than third-level education - or even the Leaving Cert.

"You don't need a formal school background and, in some ways, not having one might be an advantage as IT uses intuitive abilities. The industry is also forward looking, flexible and has an embracing sort of philosophy."

That doesn't mean the courses are easy to get on to, however. Applicants are assessed though a range of aptitude tests before being accepted, but the advantage to this is that, if an area of IT isn't suitable, the applicant can be told where their strengths lie in other fields, Davitt says.

FIT programmes not only include a wide range of formal IT skills. Participants also get instruction in preparing CVs, applying for jobs, and attending interviews.

"The demand for courses has always been huge, and employer acceptance is always very good, too," says Pringle.

The programme has already been adopted in Naples and in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, and the FIT model would work very well in other eastern European countries, she says.

Davitt notes that Sofia reminds him of Ireland in the 1980s and early 1990s, when prosperity seemed a dim prospect - although he is quick to add that people forget there are thousands of unemployed in Ireland still, many of them long-term unemployed left behind so far by the Celtic Tiger.

That's where FIT has made a difference, he says, and will continue to. "Unemployment is resolvable in Ireland. The new literacy is IT literacy."

What makes his day? "Hearing the stories of people who were unemployed but now, because of FIT, have careers and are full of confidence."