Transparency and open government is certainly on the rise across the states. Open government initiatives can communicate with citizens in so many ways, and provide information regarding problems, solutions, and trends. While most initiatives focus on the budget, state spending, contract awards and open data, one state offers an impressive resource with new insights on a critical business function in state government – human resources.
The State of Washington’s Human Resources website highlights the potential uses for data aggregation and benchmarking data from year-to-year. Much of the data reflect cuts and pressures state governments are faced with in all areas of government hiring and employment, but there are also trends highlighted and may serve as a bellwether for state CIOs to plan for a strong state IT workforce.
A few of the points for state CIO’s to consider:
- Millennials are becoming a larger portion of the state workforce as new hires.
- Statistics on new hires, promotions, transfers, and layoffs give a holistic view of potential career paths.
- State trends on wage adjustments can project potential challenges with recruiting a highly skilled state IT workforce.
- Workforce trends on length of service and retention may demonstrate if the incentives to work in state government are satisfactory.
- The average age for retirement is gradually rising, but when is the wave of retirements going to occur?
The State of Washington Human Resources website serves a resource for citizens and government employees alike to follow the recent history of budgets cuts, and hiring and salary freezes, and it also provides information regarding layoffs for government workers.
NASCIO’s 2011 brief, State IT Workforce: Under Pressure, detailed the effects of state layoffs, hiring freezes, and lack of salary increases in the state IT workforce across the United States. In a competitive environment, states often find themselves unable to compete with private industry and will need to leverage new incentives for luring a highly skilled state IT workforce. The data from the State of Washington serves as an example of how state CIOs can begin assess the processes your state uses for recruitment, retention and succession planning for state IT personnel. The use of an IT workforce assessment as part of the overall IT evaluation can help coordination with human resources departments to clarify goals, develop strategic training, review organizational strategies, and identify any gaps in skills.