These guys are so incompetent it's actually quite funny.

Last Friday Senator Coonan was attacked by Labor's Senator Conroy for causing skill shortages. So Coonan then argued there are no shortages at all. That would be the first time she's taken that line since assuming the portfolio.

The Minister in charge of AGIMO, who released the latest report, is Gary Nairn, a prize twit who parrots everything the ACS tells him. Skill shortage, profesionalism, certification, business skills. Way to go Gazza.

Gazza looks certain to lose his seat of Eden Monaro at the election.

ZD Net has a good story about the report, with quite a few comments, surprisingly. That story emphasises that the government wants to import lots of foreign workers for its government work. Oh, and they want good students to choose IT too.

Seriously though... maybe its because of two things

1. Government is a major consumer of IT resources

2. There is a ready supply of young meat at 3rd world prices on our doorstep - and that means $$$ for someone.

Who knows? interesting point though

As a former government employee, and in that role having to spend time reqruiting people for my team I think I can comment.

IT is important to most operations, not just IT people. I didn't work for the RTA (or equivalent in your state), but I will use it as an example.

If you need to get your license renewed, you go to an office, wait a while, and an hour or so later you walk out with a new one. But if the IT system behind it stuffs up, then not only is the time of the RTA staff wasted, but so is the time of all the people who depend on that service.

What if the system is down for the whole day? How many people will have to come back another day, or can't drive because they left renewing to the last minute. Will they have to put on extra staff the following day to cope with all the people who have to come back again? That all costs, not just the RTA but the people who depend on those

Most government organizations do tent to invest in IT training, if only because they have limits on what they can pay new staff. But if they don't have people will the skills or more importantly the experience then that can cause wider problems.

On a more general note, lots of people depend on IT services. If there was a shortage of Car Mechanics that would be a problem for all of us. Think what would happen if you had to wait 5 weeks to get you car repaired. Wouldn't you be pushing the government to get more people trained up?

Having worked within government, I can say that they are just as interested in foreign meat as anyone in the private sector. These reports are often just a justification for more foreign imports. Rarely are the core issues of the skills shortage (if there is one) ever addressed.

The skills shortage schtick just never goes away, even when the recruitment agents are crying in their beer. It's in the recruiters and employers interest to promote this myth in perpetuity.

Tony mentioned the ZDNet story on the government IT skills shortage. No doubt the report mentioned above and the ZDNet story are related.

The answer to all this "skills shortage" stuff is in the ZDNet story - more migrant workers.

Only foreign workers can solve govt IT skills crisis

Some companies have started really focusing on the metrics of their IT operations ie how many outages, how long to complete a task, how many people touched the task etc etc.

Some significant realizations have emerged from this, efficiency was seriously impacted by a lack of skills and this cost Money. Employing more skilled people have actually brought costs down.

In some cases this is a long term side effect of outsourcing. The offshore service providors, especially India, were great at 'Body Loading' by this I mean, a team consists of 5 people say, 4 people are clueless and 1 person may be good to excellent. In any event, the lack of competence means simple jobs have to get re-worked until the right skill is thrown at it - and this always costs money. So the net effect - a system crash stays down longer. Turnovers don't go well so business endure production downtimes for no gain - you get the picture.

The good news is that if you have skill, there are jobs waiting for you all over the world.

Very true. Many foreign workars in govt IT.

Who is this AGIMO mob anyway?

The report can be found here:

http://www.agimo.gov.au/publications/2007/september/meeting_the_demand_for_ict_skills_in_the_australian_public_service

Has anyone noticed the poor quality of this report?

And the naivity of the report, I quote:

the ICT Skills Roundtable was established in 2006 after several large agencies

approached Finance, through the Australian Government Information Management

Office (AGIMO) seeking a coordinated approach to deal with short-term ICT pressures.

Several large agencies approached AGIMO seeking co-ordination of continuation of high recruitment agency fee's, and they suckered for it. Hook line and sinker!

You'd have to be an idiot to not realize that large recruitment agencies have a unionized, in the form of the ITCRA, to look after their own purposes.

Whatever AGIMO is, if they're going to toll ITCRA's line, then they should be prepared to suffer the political consequencies.

The report is trash. So what is AGIMO, and are they a waste of tax payers money?

There are Agencies as in Recruitment agencies

and then there are Agencies as in a government agency, so in the context of the report "several government agencies" approached the Finaince Department through the Australian Government Information Managment Office (AGIMO).

Gov Budgets are taking a big hit from recruiters. The Gov does need a consistent approach across the board.

Perhaps my bad regarding my understanding of the term agencies, but the report is incredibly vague.

However, in the end notes of the report, it shows the following:

8 CCS Technology Recruiters, IT Recruitment and Retention Report, Autumn 2006 p. 9.

9 Candle ICT, Market Analysis 2007, p.2.

10 Hays Specialist Recruitment, Hays Salary Survey and Guide 2006, p.90.

15 CCS Technology Recruiters; IT Recruitment and Retention Report, Autumn 2006 p 3.

17 CCS Technology Recruiters; IT Recruitment and Retention Report, Autumn 2006 p. 15.

18 Diversiti, Diversiti IT Hiring Influence Report 2006, June 2006 p. 31.

19 Ambit, Ambit Salary Index Information Technology, 2006 p. 1.

23 Hudson, The Generational Mirage?,2005, p.7.

26 Diversiti, Diversiti IT Hiring Influence Report 2006, June 2006 p. 27.

...That's fairly much most of the members from the ITCRA.

Taking out references from internal government reports - with the exception of "intermedium" - we have what's left as a handful of references from "The Age" and other editorial newspaper reports.

Note: No references from ACS reports.

Gee what a well researched report, NOT!

Yes, that's true, D. The report is superficial and in error in some parts too.

As you point out, it's extraordinary for an official report like this to rely on and cite so-called studies by recruiting firms. Those studies are marketing documents with commercial agendas. They are not prepared by experts, they are not independent and they don't make their data available for others to check.

The report also mentions that government agencies have been trying to find candidates via the ACS website and the website set up by the previous ACS president, Mandla, who now runs the IT Pro operation for the US industry lobby group CompTIA.

As I mentioned up above, the Minister, Gary Nairn, is a complete twit.

Tony,

Why is it that the ITCRA members hold such influence over government policies?

It's incredible that the Liberal Party fight against the trade union powers yet they are so soft-headed toward recruitment lobbyists, when these recruitment lobbyists are equally damaging to the growth of a sector, particulary the IT sector.

The real problem in government IT projects is their business immaturity and understanding of IT - it's not due to "skills shortages".

For example, government departments that purely hires short-term contractors can obviously never reach beyond CMMI Level 1. Yet this more the rule than the exception in Canberra.

The issue of failing projects is not new in IT, and there is ton's of world wide literature written about it, especially from American government agencies.

Yet this report purely references recruitment agency material, and my guess is that their excuse for this would be: "there isn't much material to reference about this situation". Yet there is!

But my question is, why are the ITCRA members seen as advisors for IT related issues in Canberra, when:

1) The ITCRA are just a bunch of recruiters who practically know nothing about IT, and have no experience in project delivery.

2) The ITCRA are not an employer organization. They do not create jobs, they do not export any goods or services. Nor do they represent the interests of employer organizations.

3) The ITCRA represents the subsection of the IT industry that is the most well paid.

It's incredible that the Liberal party fall for such lobbyism.

- BT

- D

Tony Healy, 12/10/2007 11:59:00 says, "the report is superficial and in error"

"commercial agendas"

"not independent"

"a complete twit"

Only Tony is expert enough to give this sort of critique: everything he has ever written on the topic of Open Source has been superficial, erroneous, supporting an undeclared commercial agenda, not independent and authored by a complete twit so he should know!