9 Hot Trends for '99

his spring, when the Commerce Department was considering a bold new initiative called "the Digital Department," the information technology managers who were consulted about the plan for the most part endorsed it.

They supported the idea of adding Internet connectivity to their new systems and processes. But many of the managers who would be responsible for implementing the Digital Department voiced an important reservation: They wondered whether they would have the technically skilled employees or contractors required, particularly on the tight schedule the plan called for.

The shortage of technical workers is not news to most people, but until now its impact on the federal government has been shrouded. Agencies have turned to contractors to get computer and communications work done. Senior administration officials have applauded this strategy as a way to make the federal workforce more flexible, up to date and responsive.

Now, however, agencies may have reached the point where the inability to find capable technical staff may limit their ability to achieve their goals. Vice President Al Gore's reinvention team recognized the need a few years back in its Access America plan. If the plan's vision of electronic government was to be achieved, it said, agencies needed better tools and "personnel with the ability to design and deploy advanced Internet/intranet applications."

The plan called for development of a strategy for achieving this goal by June 1997, but a comprehensive strategy still isn't in place. A survey of agencies last year found that the needed skills were lacking throughout government, and most agencies reported that their Internet-savvy employees either taught themselves or learned on the job. Many agencies said they provided training, but they also said they counted on hiring employees with the needed skills. In today's tight labor market, however, federal agencies have some difficulty competing for the job applicants they desire.

Alan Lorish, chief information officer of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, volunteered to coordinate the skills improvement strategy for the reinvention initiative's technology arm, the Government Information Technology Services Board. But in a recent interview, he expressed little hope that a governmentwide training and certification program could be feasible or effective.

"Each agency has to get creative on its own in solving this problem," Lorish said. Asked about the situation at his own bureau, he said that as a small agency, BEA was lucky to have held onto its IT specialists. But, Lorish continued, "we're continuously challenged by the changing technology."

BEA's World Wide Web site is "plain vanilla" and should be enhanced with newer technology, he added, but the staff may not have all the necessary skills. When the Digital Department plan becomes official Commerce policy, Lorish said, "we will have to retrain our staff and perhaps even augment it."

Other agencies are coming to the same realization, but when they seek to add to their IT staffs, they run up against agency personnel ceilings. They are further hampered by slow processes, perceptions that the federal government is behind the times, and, for entry-level employees, pay that tends to lag behind the private sector.

According to the Office of Personnel Management, federal employment in the most common job series for IT workers has remained virtually constant for the last several years, amid an explosion of technology applications in agencies. OPM is concerned enough about the workforce problem to have issued a special report last November on "Recruiting and Retaining Information Technology Professionals." The report suggested that many agencies are not making full use of all the incentives and tools available to them under federal human resources policy.

Meanwhile, educational institutions -not only colleges and universities, but also community colleges and commercial training companies -are trying to improve the supply of skilled workers. For example, the University of Virginia recently added to its computer science offerings a new course in Internet engineering. Two Internet companies, MCI Worldcom Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., contributed $1 million worth of used routers -special-purpose computers that work at the core of the Internet -for the new course.

But the supply of newly trained workers won't match the demand anytime soon. That's why agencies are beginning to look within for the help they need. In March, President Clinton spoke to the Electronic Industries Alliance about technology issues, including the industry's push to import more workers from other nations. He said he supported relaxation of visa restrictions on technology workers, then added: "But over the long run, the answer to this problem of the lack of skilled workers cannot simply be to look beyond our borders -surely a part of it has to be to better train people within our borders to do this work."

Perhaps the same thing holds true for federal agencies. Though the evidence so far is largely anecdotal, they seem to be giving training a higher priority at budget time.