People Problems

hen the Veterans Affairs Department tries to hire entry-level employees for its big computer center in Austin, Texas, it runs into trouble. There should be a steady stream of graduates from the University of Texas, also in Austin, who'd love to get a challenging job in an impressive high-tech operation. But it doesn't work that way.

The Austin Automation Center, says acting VA Chief Information Officer Harold F. Gracey Jr., "is located very close to Dell Computer's main headquarters, and we don't compete well for kids right out of college. They pay about double what we can pay an entry-level person."

The VA center, like most other federal offices, has turned to contractors for rank-and-file technical staff. Gracey is quick to acknowledge there are some advantages to this approach. Staff can be added or subtracted quickly to match changing workloads, and sometimes the contract employees arrive with more up-to-date technical skills than their counterparts who are VA employees. But the downsides of the situation are at least as compelling.

Many of the federal employees who have stayed with VA--"folks in their 40s and 50s," he says--now must transform themselves from IT specialists to project managers and overseers of contractors. "It's going to put a heavy burden on us to manage contractors well and select well and develop good contract vehicles," Gracey says.

Neil Stillman, who retires in April as the deputy CIO of the Health and Human Services Department, says the government is in danger of losing the "residual skills" needed to get appropriate contractors in place and make sure the work gets done. At the annual meeting of government IT executives in Virginia Beach, Va., last year, fully half of those in attendance said they would leave government soon. "Where are the people going to come from to fill those spots?" Stillman wonders.

"We are not able to hire the number or quality of IT staff that we need to be able to hire," says Roger Baker, Commerce Department CIO. He predicts outsourcing will become even more common.

Interestingly, some CIOs say they have had less difficulty hiring mid-level IT professionals. A GS-14 or GS-15 job apparently holds more attraction for some of those who began their careers in the private sector. The relative stability of the federal environment may be more appealing to people at a later stage of their professional lives. And some agencies have managed to reclassify jobs so that they can hire younger people at these high levels--people who a few years ago would have been natural GS-10s or GS-11s .

Factors other than salary attract employees and prompt them to stay. "It's hard to create a great workplace for IT workers in government," Commerce's Baker says. He mentions stock options, generous bonuses and other extras that are common in some companies. Others cite the volleyball courts, running paths and showers available to ordinary employees at high-tech companies' office campuses, along with free soft drinks and other amenities. Just the appearance and upkeep of the typical federal office building might be off-putting to a recent graduate trying to choose an employer.

Technical professionals are attracted by the opportunity to work with the latest technology. A few agencies are engaged in "bleeding-edge" IT projects, but many prefer less risky systems. And observers say that federal agencies are more likely than private companies to have outdated hardware and software--or at least they're perceived that way.

The private sector is more nimble because of the profit motive, says Judy Carr, who directs the IT Executive program for the Gartner Group, a research organization. It's a cultural difference that drives companies to keep abreast of new technologies, Carr says.

Mark Boster, deputy CIO at the Justice Department before his retirement last month, says the people problem isn't unique to federal agencies. IT turnover in the private sector is high, too. Perhaps the government shouldn't expect people to stay, he suggests.

The federal CIO Council has identified IT workforce issues as one of the six strategic issues it will tackle in the next few years.