Can you hear me now?

Several years ago I researched and produced a report for NASTD called "Finding and Keeping Skilled IT Personnel." At the time, 1998, the economy was booming and the stock market bubbling, yet the mid and upper level communications and information technology managers in state government for whom I work were already facing a shortage of skilled IT personnel.

I quoted a ComputerWorld article that summed up the typical career path for talented personnel in state government this way: "I quit". In a brief survey, 29 of 30 states said that the problem of finding and keeping skilled technical personnel was either "chronic" or "regular". Twenty-three of thirty states said the classification system actually worked against finding and keeping IT good employees.

Today, I read comments by Nicholas Carr, who famously said "IT doesn't matter" and who has been getting clubbed ever since. The people problem, as he describes it, can be ascribed in part to the precipitous drop in students majoring in information technology fields, and in part, to the early adoption of utility computing.

I bring this up because three quarters of the respondents to my 1998 survey also agreed with the statement that "outsourcing for skilled technical employees is a long term trend." Just anther plug for the wisdom of civil servants.

I don't think state government has a people problem. I think it has a hearing problem.