Eight out of ten IT professionals are "oblivious" to existing IT skills initiatives such as the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), according to a new survey from IT training firm The Training Camp.

The survey of over 600 Training Camp students found that 79 percent believed that there should be a professional body for IT skills management. But it also revealed that 83 percent were not aware that bodies such as the e-skills UK and BCS-backed SFIA initiative already served this purpose and had been set up to provide a national framework for better managing IT skills development and clearly defining IT roles.

Robert Chapman, chief executive of The Training Camp, said that SFIA was an "outstanding organisation" that provides IT professionals and employers with the clearly defined skills and career development information they need, but warned that a failure to adequately publicise its activities meant there was a serious danger that it would fail to have the desired impact on the UK's skills shortages and the IT profession's image crisis.

"The UK skills shortage continues to hit the headlines, and the majority of people feel that a nationally recognised framework would enable us to standardise skill sets across the profession," he said. "But all this is irrelevant if the UK workforce has no idea of the support that's available... " We have the mechanisms in place to alleviate the skills shortage, we just need to ensure the public knows about them – otherwise we’re fighting a losing battle."

However, Malcolm Sillars, head of professional development at the BCS, said that SFIA was growing in popularity and that efforts were being made to raise awareness further, most noticeably through the up-coming annual SFIA conference this November.

"The results show that 17 percent of IT professionals are aware of SFIA, which is a considerable increase on the 11 percent that said they were aware of SFIA during the BCS awareness survey carried out in March 2006," he said.