Conference Spotlight: Talking Workforce Disruption at NASCIO Roundtable
The NASCIO midyear conference is about to start and my excitement is palpable. Soon CIOs, information technology executives and leaders from state governments across the country will gather in Baltimore to discuss best practices and trends along with new ways to operate to better meet citizen demands.
This year is especially exciting for me because I’ll be leading a roundtable discussion with Nelson Moe, the CIO of Virginia. Moe is a former U.S. House of Representatives CIO and has a wealth of knowledge to share when it comes to the challenges and opportunities facing state CIOs today.
Our roundtable at NASCIO will focus on the current disruption in the workforce and how agencies can plan and prepare for the changes that are happening. With projections that 31 percent of the federal workforce will be eligible to retire next year, one issue sure to be a hot topic is the engulfing “silver tsunami” that is upon us. Succession planning to ease the effects of this mass exodus of employees, along with an ongoing continuing education program to help properly prepare the next generation of government leaders, is critical to long-term success.
Recently, I published two articles that look closely at these topics – Learning and Development for Tomorrow’s Federal Workforce and Identifying and Preparing the Next Generation of Federal Leaders – as part of my federal workforce series in Training Magazine. Understanding and leveraging these trends is essential to overcoming the challenges they bring.
Another expected hot-button topic is the major changes happening in public sector IT staffing. As Government Technology recently discussed, the traditional model of a government IT staff filled with lifelong public servants is evolving. As a large percentage of the workforce retires, many agencies are taking the opportunity to restructure in a way that allows them to more easily expand and contract based on workload with either part-time or contract based employees.
That same article also touches on the growing adoption of hosted platforms both off-the-shelf and cloud-based. This, in turn, opens up a larger pool of IT talent since workers can create solutions without needing to write code. New recruits don’t necessarily need traditional IT background but can instead come from agency business or program divisions adding new and valuable perspective to business operations.
Our discussion is sure to be very insightful and I’m looking forward to hearing directly from state leaders. If you’re attending the NASCIO midyear conference, please join us! Our roundtable will be on Thursday, May 5th at 8 a.m. in the Constellation Ballroom on the second floor.
Hope to see you there!