Agencies routinely say it needs information technology specialists, and with initiatives to follow stimulus spending and to make government more transparent, the need for technologists will only increase. Earl Devaney, Obama's stimulus watchdog, lamented on Thursday while testifying on the Hill about the IT challenges he faces.
Maybe the government can find some IT folks who have been laid off. IT employment fell by half a percent in February, slightly better than the December drop of 1.4 percent, the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses in Alexandria, Va., reported. IN all, about 63,000 IT jobs have been lost since November 2008. Not nearly as bad as the general employment market, but you'd expect some of those workers to drift to government work. But agencies tell us that they're not seeing any increase in job applications.
COMMENTS
Where can I get a Job in the Federal Government during IT? I have over 14 years IT experience with constant IT Training Monthly. I have been out of work for one year trying to find IT Jobs.
Ekidona 07/15/09 09:49 pm ET
This is an interesting article in that the primary reason the government cannot obtain skilled and competent workers is the HR hiring process. While many workers are searching for IT positions, the flaws in government hiring practices turn most eager workers away in search of a position that will not take on average six months to fill. If the government would like to "fix" this issue, perhaps they should repair the hiring faults within before seeking highly sought after skills from without.
Todd 03/23/09 09:17 pm ET
I'm at DHHS/CDC. Our IT was outsourced to a contractor under A-76about 6 years ago. The quality of service has declined dramatically. The IT people on the ground are pretty good and friendly. But they can only do things specified in the contract, and nothing else. In other words, they can't solve some problems all the way through because "it's not in their contract". The local people would like to help but they would get in trouble. Second, the head of IT contracting is in Atlanta. My agency is not. Every request must be sent to Atlanta before it comes back to our city and staff. This delays addressing problems. Third, the contractor decided to support ONLY networked printers - a fuzzy area in the contract. Therefore when a desktop printer needs service they won't touch it. They get thrown away if there's a problem. Fourth, in my city there is no one on staff (due to downsizing to below what is needed) capable of servicing the network printers which serve usually 30-100 people. When these printers go down, it could be 3 or more weeks before they bring in an outsider to fix it. Fifth, although the contractor is supposed to replace computers every three years, many people in my center have 5+ year old computers. This part of the contract is supposedly "unenforceable". Sixth, the level of service varies by which Center (of the 12) you belong to. Seventh, everyone gets the same computer and image regardless of being a GS-3 only using e-mail or a GS-15 scientist running complicated SAS simulations. They do add back on extra programs a scientist needs after the basic image, but those are extra requests. Eighth, all admin rights have been removed so that even a very knowledgeable user is not allowed to: delete cookies, clean up your hard drive, defragment your own hard drive, set security rights for a LAN drive you own, or install any program even those on the "permitted" list. Ninth, mail and file server access goes down frequently. It is not uncommon to take 4 hours to get an email from an outside colleague, due to lengthy re-erouting inside the firewall and antivirus checking of attachments. Tenth, managers are disconnected from the working realities of scientists/admin staff because managers are on a different, faster server that has highest priority for maintenance if there are problems. This is actually the tip of the iceberg - I could go on about other issues such as poor communication during outages. I wish we could bring IT back inside the government - the people who write the conracts can't anticipate everything correctly, and the contractor has an incentive to "inflate" the number of "tickets" they address and protract the work. But since the IT jobs were outsourced, we can't hire internal IT specialists.
Annie 03/23/09 10:30 am ET
I'm a government information technology specialist. I'm the only IT guy in the office I work in and I'm told I'm lucky to have a job in this economy. The only person to get special over-and-above awards is the one who down-loaded porn, spent most of his day on eBay buying and selling, and his personal AOL email accounts. He was nine months behind in his government work. I was called on the carpet because the files he was sending his boss through AOL, illegally I must add, were getting corrupted when the files got to the supervisors government email account. They guy "couldn't manage" his official email account. Doing IT work eight hours a day isn't enough either. Additional duties are given to the IT guy who "doesn't produce" the product going out the door; he must not be doing anything so he can be given work the boss doesn't want to give anybody else because they are too busy watching movies via the web between job assignments.
Please, tell me again why there is a shortage of IT workers in government.
Mike 03/23/09 07:44 am ET