Reserving key IT specialists: Kharkiv and Lviv clusters have made proposals to the government

29 December 2022 y.

The Kharkiv and Lviv IT Clusters, in coordination with other industry clusters and associations, prepared proposals for the Cabinet of Ministers resolution on the procedure for reserving men of the conscription age. A letter with proposals was sent to the Ministers of Economy, Defense, and Digital Transformation, as well as to the Head of the President's Office. The Kharkiv and Lviv IT Сlusters unite over 500 member companies and more than 130,000 tech specialists from the East to the West of Ukraine, whose work ensures the inflow of foreign exchange to the country, good living conditions for their family members and relatives, and enables them to donate and support the Armed Forces. As of December 1, the tech business and tech specialists of Kharkiv and Lviv have transferred more than 1,5 billion UAH to help the Armed Forces and civilians. Being the largest clusters of the IT-industry, we request the government to consider the conditions allowing to reserve specialists from not only large but also medium and small IT businesses in the procedure for reserving men of the conscription age. The IT industry stood firm in 2022. But since October, due to unresolved issues with reserving and business trips, alongside extremely tough working conditions during blackouts, its dynamics of growth have been transformed into a gradual decline. According to the Lviv IT Cluster study, IT Research Resilience, in 2022, the revenue will amount to 7,2-7,5 billion, which corresponds to a pessimistic scenario. If we do not resolve these issues, the next year we will have the first IT services exports decline compared with the previous one in the last twenty years. To avoid this, we have prepared proposals that will enable reserving small and medium-sized companies' key specialists, that makeup 75% of the Ukrainian IT business. We hope that the issue of reserving key specialists of IT companies will be resolved in 2023 Q1. As far as the cycle of receiving orders is quite long, and returning a client is a long-term process. With a transparent and accessible reservation mechanism, the IT industry will continue to develop and thus support Ukraine's economy and help the Armed Forces with donations and volunteering.