Want to protect the Great Barrier Reef, enhance the health of your fellow Australians, or improve swimming coaching in Australia? Maybe an ICT career in the Australian Public Service (APS) is the way to go.
That's the pitch from a new section of CompTIA's IT Pro website launched today by Special Minister of State Gary Nairn and CompTIA regional director Edward Mandla.
Funded via a one-off $50,000 grant from the Australian Government Information Management Office, this latest bid to attract recruits to the skill-starved ICT sector puts the case that a career in ICT is more interesting than many may believe. The same goes for the public service where ICT workers can also do good things for society.
Mandla said a barrier to recruitment into the ICT sector was the perception that unglamourous programming skills are an essential qualification.
-It was a backroom programming job for many, many years," he said. -Its now moved to a business support type of profession where you need a lot of human skills, soft skills, presentation, business acumen. -There is a huge need to get workforces across the board in our industry upskilled in these soft skills."
Nairn said another perception that needed to be overcome was the view that the APS had an inflexible workplace culture.
-Each department is now looking at how they can maintain key professionals and so they have to offer flexible working conditions," he said. -Right across the various departments there are enormous opportunities."
Working for the government is also an ideal way to gain ongoing training in professional skills.
-The private sector isn't the great trainer of the technology industry," Mandla said. -The public service is one of the major trainers."
Nairn said government agencies acknowledge that ICT technology is changing dramatically.
-There's probably no better place than the Australian Public Service when it comes to training opportunities. -People in the ICT area working within the Australian Public Service are right at the cutting edge of technology."
Clicking on the -IT Jobs within the Australian Government" tab on IT Pro's site leads to profiles of successful ICT workers in the APS, information on pay rates and conditions, and listings of available vacancies.
-This is an extremely good way to highlight what technology is like in the Australian Public Service, where the career leads to, what sort of training you would get," Mandla said. -It's a tremendous initiative to showcase to young people - and to people in their 30s and 40s who might want to change their career - that technology is an exciting career and to show where it might lead to."
Nairn said that although private employers in the ICT sector offered higher levels of remuneration for senior employees than the public sector, this differential was not necessarily true for lower levels of the profession. He also acknowledged that the public service could lose employees after investing in their training.
-They might spend some time in the public service and go on to bigger and better things in the private sector, we accept that," he said. -I think it's a two-way street. If you look at some of the profiles, people are moving in and out of the public and private sector a lot more these days than once upon a time."
He said the government believed the site was a good initial investment to encourage more people to consider an ICT career in the public service.
-We'll monitor that and see what sort of flows into the public service as far as people applying and we'll reassess it on an ongoing basis."
