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GCN Home > 11/18/02 issue

Shortage of IT workers reaches a critical stage

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

Everybody in government is intensely aware of the IT work force problem. Make that crisis.

You know the grim picture. You’ve heard the dire statistics over and over.

A year ago, the National Academy of Public Administration catalogued the situation in The Transforming Power of Information Technology: Making the Federal Government an Employer of Choice for IT Employees, a report commissioned by the federal CIO Council. Among its conclusions:
  • There’s a massive, nationwide shortage of IT professionals. The outlook might not improve for decades.
  • The federal IT work force is aging. About 50 percent of IT workers are eligible for retirement in the next five years.
  • A pay gap with the private sector and the government’s lengthy hiring process keeps IT talent away.
  • The government doesn’t invest enough in IT training and continuous learning.
The NAPA panel concluded that government cannot compete under the current system. It called for systemic changes: market-driven pay, managerial flexibility, a streamlined recruiting and hiring process, competitive nonpay benefits and the creation of a learning culture.

On top of that are the likely work force changes that will come with the proposed Homeland Security Department, whose advent seems guaranteed by Republican wins in this month’s elections; the Bush administration can now count on congressional support.

Massive IT undertaking

The proposed department would have 170,000 employees, and its creation would involve a massive IT undertaking in terms of an information architecture. The administration wants to give HSD managers more flexibility and eliminate some long-standing civil service rules.

The NAPA report represented a milestone. It took the government IT work force issue out of the realm of “anecdotal conversation by different people at different times and brought qualitative analysis by a well-respected organization,” said Ira Hobbs, the Agriculture Department’s deputy CIO and co-chair of the CIO Council’s IT work force and human capital for IT committee. “It created the infrastructure that everything else is growing from.”

More than anything, perhaps, the report offered a prescription for an ideal future.

But for government managers, the crisis is a stark, everyday reality.