DESPITE THE SAGGING tech economy, the federal government is sandwiched between a pair of festering personnel problems: a decided shortfall of young incoming tech talent and a looming IT personnel retirement crisis.

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Federal CIOs have been scrambling for months to get their arms around sweeping changes necessary to alter the face of federal IT hiring and recruitment, even amid corporate layoff announcements that dominated headlines this summer and recent days.

"No one believes that just because a lot of dot-coms have gone under that there will be a glut of IT workers. Many are simply returning to the companies they left for the startups," says Ira Hobbs, acting CIO at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in Washington.

Because those workers are not flocking to the federal government -- long considered the epitome of job stability -- recruitment and retention challenges continue to mount for federal leaders such as Hobbs, who is co-chair of the CIO Council's federal IT work force committee.

"We have a problem," Hobbs acknowledges. "And added to that problem are new services and technology that are dependent upon us having a competent IT work force to make them happen."

Contributing to the fed's IT work force shortage is the disparity between government and private sector pay rates, especially at the middle and senior levels. Compounding that problem are the drawn out and tedious federal hiring procedures.

The situation is especially worrisome given the prediction that as many as half of all federal IT workers will be eligible for retirement in the next five to six years.

"Just as big an issue as [the current worker shortage] -- but one that has gotten a lot less press -- is the fact that less than 1 percent of the federal work force is under 25 [years of age] and only 10 percent is under 35," notes Mark Forman, director of IT and e-government in the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

An image problem

Image is arguably the biggest impediment to capturing fresh IT talent to groom for service in government. Many younger workers view public service as lifelong low-pay commitment. Often saddled with student loans and a desire to rise quickly up the pay ladder, many newer professionals eschew government work and its pay rates.

Countering that image, and at the same time preserving the notion of stability during the rocky economic situation facing the nation, is not easy.

"You don't want to promote [government work] like it is an opportunity to come on to the porch, settle into your rocker, and grow old with us," notes Alan Balutis, executive director of Washington-based Federation of Government Information Processing Councils. "Instead, you want to emphasize 'Kennedyesque' kinds of ideas," Balutis adds.

Some industry watchers point out that the September terrorist attacks may revive interest in public service. In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency reports that the week following the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Virginia, the number of résumés submitted electronically increased more than fivefold to 3,000, up from the weekly average of 500 to 600.

"Some people may be reminded of the value of public service. Sometimes it takes the tragic loss of life and the willingness of others to lose their lives to show that public service is a virtue," says Harris Miller, president of Arlington, Va.-based Information Technology Association of America.

Yet the need for more sophisticated IT security skills -- expected to be in high demand following the attacks -- may serve to compound the federal government's work-force problems, Miller suggests.

"This will serve to intensify the need for the government and private sector to find more people with skills to head off information security threats," Miller surmised.

Acknowledging the problem

At this point, the realization among federal IT executives has fully set in that their agencies are grappling with IT problems on both junior and senior ends. Furthermore, those trends are no longer a series of anecdotes pointing out the need to do something. The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) in Washington released in early September a snapshot of federal IT work-force issues.

In a report filled with far-reaching recommendations, NAPA researchers concluded that the government is "suffering a steady and inexorable deterioration of its current IT leadership"

"Heretofore, all we've had was someone's horror stories. Now we have a comprehensive look," says Hobbs, who characterizes the NAPA report as "empirical data" necessary to spur officials to action.

Overall, NAPA suggests the federal government establish a "market-driven, pay-for-performance" system, if it is to keep pace with the private sector.

Along the way, NAPA debunks any notion that the sagging economy will obviate the need to make the huge cultural changes necessary to transform the federal government work-force environment.

"What we found in our research is that there are more than two [federal] vacancies for every qualified IT professional. And that kind of ratio has existed more or less for about 20 years," says Myra Shiplett, director of NAPA's Center for Human Resources.

NAPA came to the conclusion that the demand for IT workers -- which has plagued federal agencies with their often byzantine hiring processes and lackluster recruitment efforts for decades -- after revisiting the issue several times. "We were very cognizant of the economic downturn, so we went back to studies on this several times," Shiplett recalls.

"But one of the chief things you've got to remember is that in the failure of the dot-coms, some of the people are IT professionals, but there are also a lot of business folks and marketing folks and others," Shiplett says.

It has become clear, though, that the tech sector's problems won't solve the government's IT woes, Shiplett says. "Our research confirmed that folks in the labor market are not willing to work for an organization that has bureaucratic and elongated processes," she says.

Looking for solutions

That's not to say that federal IT leaders have not made strides to address contrast between IT workers' expectations and the reality of government hiring procedures and pay rates. This past November the government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) introduced a pay hike for IT workers, allowing agencies to extend increased salaries to entry-level computer specialists and engineers.

The OPM effort raised IT salaries between 7 percent and 33 percent for affected personnel, concludes the General Accounting Office, an agency that serves as congressional watchdog.

Along with the pay hikes, OPM director Janice Lachance encourages agencies to "use other incentives, such as recruitment bonuses and retention allowances to attract high-tech workers into the federal service and to retain current employees who have critical IT skills," according to an OPM memo.

And federal agencies have eagerly used those new personnel tools, Forman offers.

Most involved in government work-force issues understand the need to transform the very nature of IT service if the government is to capture that crucial subset of workers. "The bottom line is that the folks we need for our future are folks coming out of college that have loans to pay off, cars to buy, and kids to raise. They are asking themselves, 'Where do I go to get the best return for my skills and abilities?' " USDA's Hobbs says.

Along with higher pay and streamlined hiring procedures, the government also has at its disposal interesting work and increased responsibilities as a lure for younger workers. "How often do you get to work on putting a man on the moon? We have a history of letting workers very early in their careers participate in projects that have a major impact on society," Hobbs says.

Equally enticing is the opportunity to work on advanced technology or in environments that mimic corporate challenges. "In the government, we are tackling issues similar to those in the private sector: How do you link legacy environments with Web environments? How do you leverage technology like UDDI [Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration] and XML?" Foreman says.

Still, a degree of fiscal realism exists, Hobbs confesses. Government salaries are not expected to reach those in the private sector's upper levels. Hobbs estimates that the government still lags 15 percent to 20 percent behind corporate America.

"We are not going to be so cutting edge that we reach the point where we have $200,000-per-year Cisco engineers working for the government, Hobbs quips.