Following is a commentary by Shell Culp, a senior fellow with e.Republic's Center for Digital Government. Culp was a longtime IT leader in California state government.
Help Wanted.
2018 will another year of doing more with less. While the economy is heating up, talent in the technology sector is tightening — and government will feel the pinch as much, and maybe more, than everyone else. Competition for qualified talent will be keen as the "silver tsunami" continues its wave of retirements. And with double-digit growth forecast for tech jobs through 2020, demand is expected to grow.
In other sectors, there are preparations to loosen purse strings with compensation to attract and retain quality talent. Government won’t have as much of that kind of flexibility; innovative retention strategies will be key areas where we will see some growth this year.
Work environments are a key focus area for government to make some progress that would attract tech talent. New recruits will be looking for more “teaming” and interactive engagements. Team management and productivity tools are plentiful, but the challenge will be overcoming the vertical nature of bureaucratic organizations to implement teamwork concepts effectively.
Other potential opportunities for attracting talent are flexible work schedules and remote work arrangements. Despite recent decisions by multinational corporations to haul workers back into the office, technology jobs offer unique options for effective remote productivity that government can leverage to its advantage in recruitment and retention efforts.
The good news for government is that retirees want to work part time — this provide a valuable resource to keep the lights on while up-skilling the existing workforce to prepare for moving toward more modern and efficient technology stacks.
The obvious opportunity for improving efficiencies may see some progress this year. Fewer systems require fewer resources to operate and maintain. While still a very slow-growing movement, government is increasingly losing its appetite for maintaining duplicate systems across the enterprise, and total cost of ownership of this practice is taking more of a driving position.
