State IT Workforce Effort Opens Doors to Vendor Partnerships

California's state leadership has been working across departments and with vendors to build workforce development programs to fill vacancies and improve skills in employees already working for the state. The state has just under 11,500 IT employees, but there is still competition among departments and with the private sector to recruit talent.

While state IT academies already exist for mid-career employees, and state agencies are reaching out to high schools and universities such as CSU Sacramento, UC Davis and Cal Poly, the Department of Technology's (CDT) Office of Professional Development is still open to vendor partnerships.

CDT also hosts an apprenticeship program that retrains current employees for technology positions.

State CIO Amy Tong told Techwire in an interview this week that the rotation of employees between the public sector and private industry is healthy for networking and talent building.

"We are trying to advocate that public and private should be working together as partners," Tong said. "Talent is talent. It doesn't matter what role you serve, as long as people understand the mission they are serving is going to benefit the people of California."

State IT leaders have already begun scouting talent from the private sector. Ralph Cesena, CIO of the state Department of Managed Health Care, is looking to build two divisions — a Business Intelligence Division and an Information Security team — and is open to candidates from inside the state or from the private sector. In an interview at last week's Cybersecurity Education Summit in Sacramento, Cesena told Techwire that his search is ongoing.

Cesena himself is an example of an IT executive who joined state government mid-career, about seven months ago, after years in the private sector.



The state's overall workforce programs are split into three groups:

• Employees new to the workforce; 
• Mid-career employees looking to improve specific skills; 
• Employees moving into IT careers from other state roles.

"Lots of training that we provide is more skill-based, both technology skills as well as soft skills like communication, how to address difficult situations," Tong said. "Soft skills are just as important as technical skills."

So far, CDT works with Cisco for a network apprenticeship; IBM to support Mainframe University; Microsoft and Amazon, in the Digital Services Academy; and VMware in the California Innovation Lab.