Kumar Poudyal
Head of IT department, Texas International College
Information Technology has been emerging in our country as the efficient and effective tool making our work easy and accessible from different locations. It has now covered a wide range of fields from personal purpose to industrial needs. The schools and college are using IT for preparing questions, education materials and maintaining students’ information system, publications are using for designing and printing, offices are using for attendance and employee managements, department stores for payroll processing and so on. The government offices are now excessively increasing the use of IT for daily operations and maintaining the employees’ information.
The software companies in Nepal are not only using programming languages for program development but also using different software project management tools in the software development processes. Few companies have already been using the particular platform of international companies for the software development regarding webpage designing and mobile apps developments.
It is a boon to all of us that many colleges in Nepal are providing several IT courses under different national and international universities. There are different IT courses like BSc. CSIT, BCA, BIT, BCS (Cybersecurity and Network Technology), MCA, PGDCA, MCS, BE Computer, ME Computer, etc. BSc. CSIT (Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Information Technology), affiliated to Tribhuvan University, a four year course, is a software engineering course with ample exposure to programming languages and new information technologies accommodated in the syllabus. Artificial intelligence, cyber security, cloud computing, data mining and data warehousing are the new technologies counted most in this course. The project in the 7th semester and the internship in the 8th semester have made BSc.CSIT really effective course that has successfully bridged the gap between academia and the industry. Yet it is true that it depends on the education institution to make is possible by giving more and more industrial exposures to students besides the academic activities. This course can only be taken by the science stream students. The number of students selecting this course is increasing day by day and the applications for the course in many high ranking colleges has exceeded the university quota. The result is also because of many job placements in the market by the students taking this course. There are several examples that students taking this course are in IT jobs during their studies.
BCA (Bachelor in Computer Applications), another recently launched IT course by Tribhuvan University is also becoming popular among the students. The BCA of TU has included many latest programing languages. On the other hand, it has attracted many students with zeal in graphics, animation and multimedia. It has emphasized also in recently popular technologies like cyber law, professional ethics, operations research and mobile programming. Any stream students can study this course.
BIT (Bachelor of Information Technology) is among the popular IT university academic programs, which is more similar course to BCA. It has also accommodated most of the latest IT technologies like E-Commerce, Mobile Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Multimedia System and Cloud computing. We have both national and international courses for this program. We have found more students preferring the international BIT programs.
BCS (Bachelor of Computer Science, Networking and Cyber Security) has also attracted the number of student who are more interested in computer networking and cyber securities. Because we are having more and more data transaction and data storage in digital devices, needs have been aroused regarding data security concerning data storage and data transactions. There are very few colleges running this course as the hardware and software resources are more expensive as compared to other IT courses.
PGDCA (Post Graduate of Diploma in Computer Application) has been a choice to those students who have completed the bachelor’s degree in other disciplines other than IT and wanted to opt their master’s degree in IT courses or those who also wanted to have a bachelor’s degree equivalent IT certification after their bachelor’s in other disciplines.
Regarding masters’ programs in IT; ME, MCS and MCA under different universities are popular programs. The objective of these programs are more strengthening the students in IT researches than introducing the new technologies. Students are already introduced with the new technologies and software methodologies in the different Bachelors’ degrees. The masters’ degrees of IT on the other hand aims to make the students specialized in any of the particular IT domain like cloud computing, data mining and warehousing, artificial intelligence, networking, etc.
Nowadays, IT has become integral part of our lives. Personally, we are using different digital gadgets for different IT services like video chat, messaging, game applications, music and video applications, contact applications, calendars and notifications etc. Companies are depending upon information systems for daily operations, records keeping, data storage, information accessing, information monitoring and surveillances, operating the assembly lines in factories, maintaining the employees’ records etc.
We see IT used in almost every field, whether it is the reservation of tickets for airplanes and railways, payment of telephone and electricity bills, deposit and withdrawal of money from banks, processing of business data, forecasting of weather conditions, diagnosis of diseases, searching for information on the Internet, etc. IT has been extensively in schools, universities, organizations, music industry, movie industry, scientific research, law firms, fashion industry, etc.
Talking about the IT careers, there are huge number of job title with different roles. Many consider Software developers only as the major job role for IT professionals. In fact, we have many roles in this IT age depending on the organizations’ nature and objectives. We can take IT officer in context to Nepal which is in high demand from government offices to many private companies’ offices. The major role of IT officer is to operate the information system deployed in the company or the government agency along with maintaining the employees’ records. In the software companies, there are software developers responsible for developing the software using different software development and software management tools. More software management tools are used by system analysts, the manager of the project in the software company. There are webpage designers, database administrators, database designers, networking engineers and different such IT professionals in the software companies. There are even marketing officers in the software companies with different IT degrees.
There are GIS (Geographical Information System) professionals under different job titles and roles maintaining geographical information regarding forest, climate, wind directions, rivers, lake natural resources, distance information etc. The Survey Department, the only National Mapping Organization of Nepal, has been continuously working in the sector of Surveying, Mapping, Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, which are very much crucial for the planned development of the country where related IT professionals are contributing their efforts and expertise. Furthermore, the organization is also contributing in Land Administration as well as International Boundary Management using different IT systems.
Because of the challenges in cyber security, the banks are also recruiting ethical hackers besides IT officers and other roles. Cyber security professional are also in demand in other companies working for big data, data warehousing and data mining, cyber security divisions in security agencies concerning both private and government.
Cloud computing is recently emerging in Nepal, as a result many private organizations have deployed the IT professionals regarding cyber security, data warehousing and data mining like webpage designers, business intelligence developers, web application developers, network engineers, cyber security experts and software engineers for the efficient and effective cloud computing services.
Evaluating all the job titles and roles and the different dominant fields of IT we can conclude that we have to increase our pace in producing qualified and skilled human resources not only for the current scenario but also for the possible future trends. The world is in the race of changing technology particularly in terms of IT. As a result, more dynamic professionals are to be produced from the IT institutions which is actually the great challenge. But the positive part is that there are many IT colleges with different advanced IT programs inside the country. The IT graduates from these institutions are able to grab different roles in and outside the country as they are no doubt the global citizen in this IT age.
