Skills gap shrinks between public, private tech workers

Efforts to boost information technology training for government employees have helped narrow the skills gap between public- and private-sector IT workers, according to a recent study by Brainbench, an online skills-testing firm.

"Government IT workers are showing significant strengths in some important technology areas-especially the increasingly popular Unix [and] Linux arenas," said Mike Russiello, president and CEO of the Chantilly, Va.-based company.

The study compared the scores of more than 4,000 government employees and more than 7,000 private-sector workers who took Brainbench's IT skills tests online. The study analyzed the workers' test scores in eight major areas and found that government workers' scores surpassed those of private sector workers in three categories.

Government workers' average scores on tests of skills of the Unix and Linux operating systems were 3 percent higher than those of private-sector workers, according to the report, which was released Oct. 29. Government workers also scored 5 percent higher than private-sector workers on skills tests involving Microsoft technology administration and 8 percent higher on Microsoft applications tests.

Russiello said those scores indicate that a "historical skills gap" between government and private-sector IT workers has begun to close. "The increased attention that has been paid to this historical skills gap by such leading organizations as the federal government's Chief Information Officer's Council and the National Academy of Public Administration have played a role in helping to close this ... gap," he said.

But the study also found that private-sector workers outperformed government employees in five of the eight major tech categories. In tests of entry-level tech skills, private-sector workers' scores were 17 percent higher than those of public-sector workers. Private-sector workers also scored 17 percent higher than government workers on programming-language skills tests.

Private-sector employees also garnered higher scores than government workers on tests of networking skills, database skills and Internet skills.

Virginia Republican Tom Davis, who chairs the House Government Reform Technology and Procurement Policy Subcommittee, said his bill to create a "digital tech corps," H.R. 3925, which the House approved last April, would help further close the skills gaps.

"This study shows that our heightened efforts to offer better training and pay to government IT workers are beginning to pay dividends," Davis said recently. "But we still face severe challenges when it comes to recruiting and retaining top-notch IT specialists."