TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

Several major IT projects at the Veterans Affairs Department are being hampered by a shortage of experienced federal IT project managers, Federal Computer Week reports. VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker said on Tuesday that managing projects such as telehealth and moving to paperless benefit systems at VA requires a specific set of IT skills that are in short supply across the federal government. "We cannot turn it over to non-government workers," Baker added.

A new report by CDW-G suggests that there may be some valuable lessons for federal IT leaders in the aftermath of last week's snowstorms that shut down federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., area for more than four days. The report, "Seven Habits of Highly Resilient Organizations," provides activities that federal IT executives should undertake to ensure that interruption to agency operations during weather disruptions or other emergencies is minimal.

"Often, first actions are directed toward the protection of physical property," the report states. "But more important than an organization's physical property is ensuring the integrity of its data, communications capabilities and the information technology infrastructure to support both -- regardless of the circumstances surrounding a disaster."

IT leaders should start by conducting a business impact assessment, in part by creating an inventory and prioritizing critical processes for the entire agency, the report states. IT executives also should take steps to protect data by backing it up frequently, storing multiple copies of data off-site, and upgrading the backup equipment to a faster version that reduces the time it takes to complete a backup cycle. "Once data is backed up, organizations will need to carry out a practical and well-tested plan to retrieve the information," CDW-G states.

Agencies also should add uninterrupted power supplies for critical servers, network connections and selected personal computers to keep most essential applications running, and identify and appoint a cross-functional preparedness team and recovery team of various IT experts who can identify and prioritize critical IT processes, the report states. IT executives also should document, test and update the disaster preparedness plan, form relationships with vendors, and consider telecommunications alternatives, such as wireless phones and satellite phones, in developing a disaster preparedness plan.

While agencies with robust telework programs were able to sustain operations during last week's snowstorm, most were crippled for the better part of a week. Could your agency have been better prepared to redeploy employees to work from home, and would it have been better off as a result?

Government information technology leaders will need to embrace new ideas and approaches in order to address a wide range of technical and management challenges, including increasing transparency and boosting cross-agency collaboration, according to a new survey by InformationWeek.

The survey, which included 177 federal government IT leaders and was conducted in September 2009I just , found that IT leaders face a host of management challenges, including hiring and retaining skilled IT talent, even despite the economic recession and high unemployment rate. For example, 41 percent of IT leaders identified hiring and retaining skilled IT talent as a major management challenge. "After a few years in government, federal workers often take their knowledge of the agency and technical skills they have developed and receive significant salary bumps in the private sector," the report states.

The report also noted that hiring challenges have often hampered government's willingness to develop in-house talent, causing many agencies to simply outsource functions, projects and IT staffing needs. But such a model delivers only short-term savings while sacrificing the institutional knowledge that is developed during projects, the report states. More than half of respondents said they do not believe government will lessen its reliance on contractor personnel for IT projects in the future.

Survey respondents also identified the top traits of a successful IT leader. The top answer, with 64 percent, was communication, followed by technical expertise (47 percent), focus on agency mission (46 percent) and attention to performance and outcomes (46 percent). Private sector management experience and having professional and industry contacts were considered the least important traits, receiving only 15 percent and 8 percent of IT leaders' support, respectively.

The survey also fund a disconnect between the Gov 2.0 initiatives that agencies are most interested in and the greatest IT challenges that agencies face. For example, 53 percent of respondents noted that security is the top test they face, although security is not a focus of the Open Government directive memo. "A change in culture can only occur if assurances are provided that information will remain safe," the report .

Private sector technology professionals received nearly flat salaries in 2009, with many citing a decrease in satisfaction with salaries and non-compensation incentives, according to a new survey by Dice.com.

Dice's 2009-2010 annual salary survey found that technology salaries increased by average of only 1 percent, to $78,845, last year. Technology professionals in the Washington, D.C., area saw the largest average increase of 4 percent, raising average salaries to $89,014. Those in the government and defense sector enjoyed an even higher increase of 4.4 percent, Dice found.

The survey also found that Silicon Valley also remains a top metro area for technology professionals, with a reported average IT salary of $96,299. New York City reported a 1.5 percent increase in average salaries to $86,710.

Still, nearly half (47 percent) of technology professionals said their employers also are doing nothing to keep them motivated. Only 19 percent of tech workers said they are being offered more interesting or challenging work assignments, while just 14 percent are benefiting from more flexible work hours. Only 24 percent of technology professionals said they received a bonus last year.

Advanced Business Application Programming, or ABAP, remained the top-paid tech skill in 2009, with an average salary of $115,916. This was followed by Service Oriented Architecture, with an average salary of $107,827, and Extract Transform and Load, with an average salary of $105,844. The highest paid titles include IT management ($114,874), information architecture ($105,247), project manager ($103,437), software engineer ($91,342), and database administrator ($91,283).

How do your skills, salary and non-compensation incentives stack up? My guess is that while government salaries might not measure up, the job security and other non-monetary motivators, including challenging work assignments and flexible schedules, make up for it. Do the survey results make you more satisfied with your government IT job, or do they make you want to jump ship for the private sector?

The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday announced a complete restructuring of its organizational chart. The restructuring outline includes a few plans for information technology, including elevating the role chief information officer at the agency.

OPM Director John Berry wrote a memo in September that outlined his plans to give the OPM CIO greater visibility and authority within the agency. The new reorganization lays out the CIO's role, noting that he or she will develop the information resource management plan and define the information technology vision and strategy to include IT policy and security. The CIO also will manage implementation reviews of major IT programs and projects, provide oversight of major IT acquisitions, work with other agencies on governmentwide projects such as e-government and develop long-range planning for IT human resource strategies, OPM said. The agency's acting CIO is Matthew Perry.

The reorganization also includes other IT initiatives, including overseeing the management of IT infrastructure and e-government contracts and examining new HR solutions to enhance agencies' ability to attract talent.

Overall, the reorganization creates five divisions at OPM: employee services, retirement and benefits, merit system audit and compliance, federal investigative services and human resources solutions. The reorganization process, which began in April, became effective Tuesday with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between agency and union officials.

For more information on OPM's reorganization, check out Alyssa Rosenberg's article at Government Executive.

Hiring expectations of private sector technology recruiters and hiring managers have improved slightly over the past six months, according to a recent survey by Dice.com. The survey found that 45 percent of recruiters and hiring managers expect flat to increasing hiring plans for the first six months of 2010, while 48 percent of recruiters and hiring managers said they anticipate cutbacks in IT hiring.

While the anticipated number of cutbacks remains too high, the numbers show significant improvement since June, when eight in ten employers reported decreased hiring expectations, Dice found.

In addition, companies headquartered in the eastern and southern regions of the U.S. were the most optimistic about hiring, and the sectors respondents were most excited about in 2010 for technology professionals were healthcare, finance and government, the survey found.

And while eight in 10 respondents reported that they would be hiring at least one IT professional in the next three months, the people hired should not expect better pay or a quick hiring process. For new hires, nine in 10 companies said salaries are flat compared to last year, and 50 percent said that the time to fill a position is longer than this time last year.

The survey results indicate that government IT jobs are still maintaining their competitive edge over the private sector, especially considering that federal workers are on par to see a 2 percent pay increase in 2010, and agencies are making strides to reforming the process and the amount of time it takes to hire new professionals.

A new survey by Robert Half Technology suggests that government competition with the private sector for IT talent could show a slight increase in 2010. According to the first quarter of the IT Hiring Index and Skills report, 7 percent of technology executives at U.S. companies anticipate adding IT staff in the first quarter of 2010, while 4 percent plan workforce reductions. Eighty-nine percent of CIOs said they plan to maintain current personnel levels.

Additionally, 42 percent of CIOs are confident that their companies will invest in IT projects in the first quarter of 2010, which likely will translate into increases in IT personnel, Robert Half noted. Among the CIOs at companies who plan to add staff in the first quarter, 41 percent said they expect to hire entry-level employees, while 40 percent said they are focused on staff-level talent (between two and five years of experience). Twenty percent of executives said they will concentrate hiring at the senior-staff level.

Among the most in-demand skills cited by CIOs were networking, security, applications development, network administration, desktop support and Windows administration, the survey found.

Dice.com reports that while there has been much speculation that technology jobs in the Washington, D.C., area would boom in the past year, mostly due to new federal health care regulations, overall unemployment in the location stands at 11.4 percent, up from 7.4 percent a year earlier.

But there's good news for those in the tech community: IT will be one of the top fields as D.C. emerges from the recession. Moody's Investors Services predicts that the financial regulation and health care sectors will lead the way.

In addition, chief information officers in the South Atlantic region, which includes the District, are the most optimistic about hiring, with 4 percent planning new hires, according to a recent survey of chief information officers by Robert Half Technology. The CIOs noted that the skills most in demand in the District market are network administration, desktop support, Windows administration, virtualization, Web 2.0 expertise and computer system design.

The Obama administration on Thursday issued an executive order that bans federal employees from text messaging while driving on official government business. The order was announced on Thursday by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at the end of a two-day summit in Washington on distracted driving. The order also encouraged federal contractors to ban text messaging while driving in connection with government business.

The order also requires agencies to consider new rules and programs and reevaluate existing programs to prohibit text messaging while driving, and conduct education and outreach for federal employees about the safety risks. "These initiatives should encourage voluntary compliance with the agency's text messaging policy while off duty," the order states.

Do you text while driving a government vehicle? Do you see this as a concern that generally stems from a specific generation, or does the concern span generational lines? Please leave a comment below, or click here to take Government Executive's poll.

While the U.S. high-tech industry shed 115,000 jobs between January and June 2009, a 1.9 percent decline, it still faired better than the overall private sector, according to a report released on Wednesday by the TechAmerica Foundation.

The report, which is based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, found that from June 2008, when the financial crisis and economic downturn began gaining momentum, through June 2009, the technology industry lost 224,100 jobs, a 3.7 percent decline. But the technology sector weathered the downturn better than the overall private sector, which shed jobs at a rate of 5.1 percent over that same time period, the report found.

The report also found that the losses were greatest for U.S. technology manufacturers, which shed 69,500 net jobs in the first half of 2009. High-tech services employment was also down from January to June of 2009, dropping 45,500 jobs. Engineering and tech services lost 21,500 jobs, communications services shed 13,600 jobs, and software services dropped 10,400 jobs during the first half of 2009.