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June 30, 1999

IT Skills Gap Demands Action

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Related links:

Labor Intensive

The Age Factor

Interview: Secretary of Commerce, William Daley

sidebar: Goverment Recommendations

U.S. Department Of Commerce's Descriptions of IT Worker Job Categories

Go For IT!
The U.S. Dept. of Commerce's public resource website for IT hiring and training.

With fewer resources and smaller IT departments, small and midsize businesses have an especially hard time training and retraining their IT workforce. Carnes suggests these companies collaborate, particularly with others in their geographic region, to help share the burden of training and retraining costs.

Tapping nontraditional pools of labor may also help bolster the number of skilled IT professionals in the U.S. workforce. The Office of Technology Policy suggests the business community and state and local governments establish regional plans to train non-IT workers for IT jobs. The federal government could partner with businesses to develop a program to provide short-term training to technical workers leaving the armed forces, to prepare them for civilian technical jobs. Likewise, the federal government could ensure adequate IT worker training in the Native American community and focus economic development efforts to encourage businesses to hire Native American workers trained in IT. The report also recommends employers and educators work to develop short-term IT training programs for graduates of non-IT college programs that incorporate apprenticeships at companies where trainees can gain experience.

While most of the training burden and costs will fall to businesses, the departments of Commerce, Education, and Labor, and the National Science Foundation have all launched initiatives to bolster IT training and expertise. Last year, the Education Department announced $6 million in grants to encourage business and IT vendors to participate in school-to-work IT programs, including educator and IT industry leader conferences around the country.

The National Science Foundation established a $21 million education fund in March to provide an estimated 8,000 one-year scholarships of up to $2,500 each to low-income students pursuing degrees in computer science. Like many of the grant programs, the NSF's initiative is funded by the $500 application fee companies pay for H1-B nonimmigrant skilled worker visas.

The Commerce Department is holding town meetings to talk to industry, educators, and businesses about the challenges of finding and filling IT positions. Last year, Commerce launched a Web site that tracks high-tech workforce initiatives and lets individuals collaborate on hiring tactics via a message board.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department integrated its America's Talent Bank and America's Job Bank information systems, creating an $8 million Internet system that links both employers and potential employees across the country. Called America's Job Bank, the system includes both non-IT and IT positions, and it can link state employment service offices to provide job-seekers with what the Labor Department says is the largest pool of active job listings. There are between 8 million and 9 million individual job searches per month. America's Job Bank is available on computer systems in public libraries, colleges and universities, high schools, shopping malls, and at transitions offices on military bases.

Most importantly, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and U.S. Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) have proposed two bills that could help ease the labor crunch. One offers employers a credit against income tax for IT training expenses, extending an estimated $112 million in tax credits over 10 years to employers who train and retrain IT workers. The other bill would permanently extend a tax exclusion-now due to expire--for employer--provided educational assistance as well as graduate education assistance.

Other legislative proposals include the Mathematics and Science Proficiency Partnership Act of 1999, which would authorize the NSF to make grants available to education institutions in urban and rural areas. The Technology Education Capital Investment Act of 1999 authorized the departments of Commerce and Education to increase the amount of grants for IT, science, math, and engineering programs.

Despite all their efforts and interest, Commerce officials realize the problem won't be easily solved. "There's no silver bullet or any one solution to the IT work force challenge," Carnes says. "In order to ensure that America has the best, most highly skilled information technology workers, we need to work together to build the hard-core math and science skills in our workers of today and the future."