Some Simple Ways to Make Government Work Appeal to IT Professionals

 
State and local governments have a big, unmet need for IT talent. Although they generally cannot compete with the private sector on pay, some tech professionals are willing to accept lower salaries in exchange for meaningful work with a big impact. Even so, many are frustrated by the lengthy hiring process involved in getting a government job.

Roughly half of state and local governments report that in the past year they had more open IT positions than applicants. A poll of 300 HR managers found that 59 percent of states and 39 percent of local governments had IT roles that are hard to fill.

The need is increasing. The number of IT jobs in cities are growing at roughly twice the rate of non-IT jobs, says Michael Bartlett, program director for postsecondary and workforce success at the National League of Cities. Making things worse, governments expect a wave of retirements, across all job types, in the next few years.

All this is forcing governments to get more creative and rethink their hiring approaches. Recruiting experts recommend that governments lower some of the hurdles that applicants face. They should tailor hiring processes for the IT specialties at hand and find the right job boards to reach them. They should also clarify job descriptions that are overly generic, or which might make sense for internal classification systems but not tech professionals scanning job listings. “'Cyber engineer 3' … no one knows what that means,” says Meredith Ward, deputy executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.

Many tech professionals simply have never really thought about working for government, or even realized it has a need for them, says Jennifer Anastasoff, executive director of Tech Talent Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages mid- to senior-level tech professionals transition to the public sector. It’s helped New York state find its Chief Customer Experience Officer Tonya Webster, and convinced Pennsylvania’s Chief Information Officer Amaya Capellán to consider a public-sector career.

Two types of mid-career professionals tend to transition to government, Anastasoff says: those seeking a challenge and those who want to give back. The former tend to want to spend a year or two tackling governments’ tricky engineering problems, while the latter eye a larger career shift. Amplifying that point, Keith Wilson, of the nonprofit U.S. Digital Response says that many people who’ve left the private sector say it’s because they couldn’t always see the impact of their work and wanted to feel like they were doing good for their community.

What States and Localities Need

In addition to job satisfaction, state and local governments can usually offer more job security than the private sector, being less prone to sudden reorganization and layoffs. Governments aren’t trying to be the first to innovate but adopt strategies after they’ve been proven to work. And, with government functions encompassing everything from police to airports to health departments, IT professionals can expect to get a wide variety of experience.

Skills related to cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and generative AI tend to be in high demand in the public and private sectors alike. States need more chief data officers and chief privacy officers, while counties are struggling to get enough folks with geographic information system (GIS) skills.

Governments also need people who understand how to modernize legacy tech and individuals who can improve digital accessibility ahead of federal 2026 and 2027 deadlines, Ward says.

Some government IT shops advertise themselves as offering first and last careers. Young people may start in government work and build skills, then depart after a few years for private-sector paychecks, before eventually coming back. Offering IT internships can help attract early-career talent. 

Lowering Barriers to Hiring

But professionals wanting to work in government sometimes get discouraged by a cumbersome hiring process. The best practice is that it should take no more than 60 days to hire a candidate, Anastasoff says. But in government, hiring processes for mid- to senior-level candidates can take eight or even 12 months, with job seekers not always kept in the loop about what’s going on with their applications.

Slow processes and lack of communication can make candidates feel unwanted, so they move onto new jobs and become unavailable to hire for several more years.

Sometimes outdated processes are what slow things down. Before St. Louis revamped and digitized its hiring process, it involved steps including faxing, pulling forms from filing cabinets and physically walking paper documents elsewhere to get stamped, says Bartlett, of the National League of Cities. Processes put in place in a different labor climate also often haven't been updated. “It tends to be the case in cities that they have higher hiring requirements for the same positions, even higher than states and the federal government,” he says.

Lack of remote-work options are another challenge. This can narrow the hiring pool, excluding candidates who will not or cannot relocate themselves and their families. That can be particularly challenging for rural counties, which have fewer local candidates to draw from. Many governments are trying to widen their application pools, in part by opening jobs to those who can demonstrate the right skills but may not have a bachelor’s degree.

Upskilling current employees can also reduce hiring needs. Governments are often better equipped to budget for training than for higher starting salaries. Sometimes governments can also find free training available on topics such as AI. Growth opportunities can in turn improve employee retention.

The National Association of Counties is launching a CIO Reserves Program, to connect counties with retired CIOs who still want to be involved part time. The idea is that these retired CIOs could consult or offer assistance on short-term projects, such as developing a cybersecurity road map.

Many cities and counties also realize they simply can’t afford to hire a fully staffed, in-house IT team. Instead, they often look to vendors to help fill gaps. But for this to work, they still need in-house talent that’s able to implement services from state partners and manage service providers, says Angelina Panettieri, legislative director for IT and communications at the National League of Cities.