Government Technology - January 2009 - (Page 18)

CIO Joyce Wing works hard to ensure that IT in Santa Clara County, Calif., will go on if there’s a retirement wave. Her succession planning strategy allows knowledge to be passed down to those who’ll need to take over. She also rehires retirees when necessary. In September 2007, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released a report, State IT Workforce: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?, that found a staggering 80.4 percent of survey respondents from 46 states said they were having difficulty recruiting new employees to fill vacant IT positions. Fifty-four percent of them said the shortage of candidates hindered strategic IT initiatives. To many in government, the message is clear: Recruit more aggressively. Now. The New Wave There always will likely be enough preretirement-age applicants in their 30s, 40s and 50s eager to fill voids left by outbound baby boomers; many employers are also interested in recent college graduates or those who will graduate soon. These younger citizens are commonly called Millennials, many of whom could grow into government careers. “We know from our own research that 60 percent of our staff is eligible to retire over the next 10 years,” said Dan Ross, CIO of Missouri. “Whether they will or not remains to be seen, and I suspect with rising prices on food and gas, they will work longer in the workplace than traditionally.” He admits that he is unable to predict the outcome, but said the potential exists for a huge problem. Take a trip to California and the effects are already being felt. Since Joyce Wing, CIO of Santa Clara County, took her position in 2006, she’s actively engaged in succession planning to mitigate circumstances that might arise if too many people leave within a short time period. Wing manages approximately 210 staff members, and 70 of them could retire right now if they wanted, she said. If they did, this would create a dilemma similar to when the department experienced a personnel crisis three or four years ago after the county offered staff a two-year retirement incentive package. “I had 31 people walk out in one day. That took us about a year to try to recover; that was hard. We tried to prepare, and a lot of people waited until the last minute because they weren’t sure if they wanted to retire or not, and so they decided the last week,” Wing said. She estimates that about 50 percent of county employees will be able to retire in 2010 or 2011. Naturally most states are trying to recruit fresh talent to mitigate the predicted worker shortage, but the results aren’t comforting. JAN_09 Bill Willis, deputy CIO of North Carolina, said IT departments should accommodate Millennials’ technology habits in order to attract them to the public-sector work force. “We may have to get more flexible,” he said. “Right now, security demands are pushing us, in many places, more and more into locking down that desktop or laptop, yet the next-generation employee may not accept that lockdown.” When employers issue corporate- or government-owned equipment, they typically think in terms of strictly managed PCs or laptops, but younger workers might reject this control. For one thing, the Millennials’ world includes more technological gadgets than just computers, like iPhones for example. And they don’t just use these devices at work. “They are people who have the technology and their access to the network and the communications embedded in the way they live, not just as something that they use for work,” Willis said. “Right now, security demands are pushing us, in many places, more and more into locking down that desktop or laptop, yet the next-generation employee may not accept that lockdown.” Bill Willis, deputy CIO, North Carolina Demographers disagree on exactly what birth years make someone a Millennial, though it’s generally accepted that the first Millennials were born around 1977. For government, what’s more important than when they were born is how to get them into public service. Is state having difﬁculty recruiting new employees? No 19.6% Yes 80.4% Source: IT Workforce: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Just as employees prefer different types of pens, next-generation workers may feel the same way about the devices they use to access employers’ networks. “One of them is going to like one kind of appliance to get in, the other might like another,” he said. PDAs, cell phones, etc., for young people — the digital sky is their limit. Oklahoma’s state government is successfully pushing young people to try public service. The Carl Albert Public Internship Program (CAPIP) is a state-run endeavor that’s allowed a steady stream of college graduates to enter state employment. The internship, offered through the state’s Office of Personnel Management, is a bridge between college and state service. Internships are provided at two levels: an undergraduate level and an executive fellowship level for graduate students. If the executive fellows work at least 1,000 hours a year, they are enrolled in state health insurance and retirement benefits 16 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - January 2009

Government Technology - January 2009 Contents Point of View On the Scene Big Picture Four Questions for... Stemming the Retirement Tide Getting the Picture Fact of Matter Money Trail Rays the Roof Trick or Tweet? The Modern Way to Vote Products signal:noise

Government Technology - January 2009

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