The production of salary profiles of ICT professionals: Moving from structured database to big data analytics

The national information communications technology (ICT) industry association (popularly known as PIKOM) in collaboration with the largest online job recruitment service provider, namely Jobstreet.com, has been publishing salary profile of ICT professionals in Malaysia annually since 2006. The series has been publishing average salary of ICT professionals by industry, job category, employment size, geographical locations and top paying industry. The online job registration system that Jobstreet.com biannually updates constituted the data source for the statistical activity. The reported data are of high quality as there is an inherent tendency for jobseekers to furnish accurate information in search of new jobs or career advancements. The past series also demonstrated consistency and stability in data trends that official statistics is equally concerned about. Not only private sector, the mainstream policy and planning agencies also have become vivid user of PIKOM data, in particular ICT salary records at three digit occupation and five digit industry levels. Typically such levels of data dissemination are not feasible under national sample surveys. More importantly, the ICT salary data are published as official statistics in the Digital Economy Satellite Account (DESA) system that consolidates all ICT data in the country including private sector initiatives. As next level collaboration, the paper also discusses big data analytics (BDA) targeted at semi-structured and unstructured data that the online job registration system entails.