Federal Workforce Development Makes an Impact on the IT Industry

Today, there are more than 600,000 open IT jobs in the United States, making IT training and education as critical as ever in building a strong workforce. The current economic environment has nurtured continuing developments in the IT industry. As new technologies emerge, the industry is looking to organizations to develop and drive new talent to fill those open jobs.

The common theme for driving this talent is collaboration. It will be the collaboration of agencies, public and private organizations to promote industry practices and development and provide more employment opportunities for the workforce at large.

Government groups like the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Education (DoE) and Department of Commerce (DoC) are working toward developing and funding programs to encourage individuals to pursue certification to find employment within the IT industry.

The DoE has brought community colleges and employers together to work on a solution. Dr. Frank Chong, deputy assistant secretary for community colleges, DoE, told Colloquium attendees how community colleges serve a wide variety of students from career changers to skill seekers to out-of-work professionals. These groups are looking for an outlet that will help them develop the advanced skills they need to break out into the workforce.

Community colleges met employers and asked, “What is it that you need?”  Employers came back with the dire need for college- and career-ready individuals. Individuals today are testing at or below passing level in areas like math and science. Community colleges took this information and are working on strategically re-working classroom curriculum to better prepare students for their futures.

The DoD is the only department in the government that has mandated certification for their employees across the board. More than five years ago, the department didn’t drive internal certification and their end result was failure. Contractors and civilians involved with the DoD did not have to get certified, even though they made up the 60 percent of the employees who worked in cybersecurity.

Mandating certification for all employees became a necessity. The DoD worked with organizations like CompTIA to accomplish this and have since established a baseline for everyone in the department. After the DoD set this mandate for their cybersecurity efforts, the incidence of vulnerability has decreased significantly. The mandate also gives the industry the reassurance that every employee in the cybersecurity sector is up-to-date on their certifications and is not falling behind on the latest advances.

Other organizations and academic institutions have collaborated to develop education programs to build the IT workforce in cybersecurity as well as healthcare IT. These organizations have identified major roles and hot button issues that need to be addressed within the IT industry and are working with publicly funded grants to develop curriculum and programs to prepare individuals to enter the workforce well prepared.

The IT industry is depending on organizations to help prepare future technicians, engineers and analysts. Without effective collaboration, these groups would fail and leave the industry without its workforce.