Gov't Wants Techies to Play Musical Chairs

dsoltesz writes "Legislation that's been in the works to put a program in place to allow government techies to trade places with private sector counterparts for six to twelve month stints, just passed in the House. The government seems to be on the winning end of the Digital Tech Corps Act, until perhaps, the government IT workers realize the grass really is greener on the corporate side of the fence... If the bill makes it, it will be interesting to see if the concept actually gets implemented."

Comments

Greener Grass?

[cleetus]

I don't think this is always the case. Perhaps government IT workers chose their employer based on their desire to work *only* 40 hours a week, job security, and a salary paid in American Dollars (instead of NASDAQ shares). For some, those things might be worth the tradeoff of a lower salary than the private sector offers.

cleetus

Re:Greener Grass?

[Raleel]

I know those are reasons I work for the gov't. Gov't employees get paid the same amount whereveer you go, so pick a place where your money will go father.

Unlike some IT places in gov't, I actually go on call (aka pager duty)....once every 4 months. Then I have it for a week. How may pager calls have I gotten? 2...in 3 years.

Gov't IT jobs will not put you in the hospital young. They are about reasonable amounts of work, using big hardware, and helping out whoever is spending the tax dollars to make something good happen.

by what criteria?

[Xzzy]

> grass really is greener on the corporate side
> of the fence

I happen to hold a government job, and after the four years prior to that holding a private sector job, I find it refreshing.

The atmosphere is laid back, there's no constant fears of being bought up or laid off, there's some truly brilliant people to learn things from, the benefits and pay is quite competitive, and when they say 9-5 on a government job, they MEAN 9-5. 7 months here and I haven't worked overtime once. I carry a pager, and it's never been used.. once.

The workload varies between very light to decently busy to keep me interested, but I'm still left with enough time that I can do pretty much anything I want with any piece of hardware/software we own and teach myself something.

They have tuition reimbursement, *frequently* have guest speakers talking about various unix topics, and so on.

Now obviously there's some bureaucratic headaches, but if you want my opinion, the grass is greener on the *governmen* side. ;)

ok let's see WHO they will be working for!!!!!

[stopbit]

I have a friend in the Army who is a CIo for a military hospital [he has a basic understanding of technology]. He has been told that he will be working for Microsoft next year!

Kind of makes me sick.....he is going to have PKI crammed down his throat then take it back to the military!

Didn't the government have those folks in court for some reason????? Holy conflict of interest!!!!!

Grass is greener on both sides

[Enry]

Having worked for the govt (Dept. of VA) and the private sector, there really are good sides to each.
(my memory of govt work may be fuzzy, since it's been 6 years since I worked there)

+Govt:
Real retirement, usually after 20 yrs of service
Pay raises based on years of service (plus yearly Cost Of Living Adjustments)
VERY hard to get laid off/fired.
Chance to play with new gear (I was burning CD-ROMs in 1992, also got to use optical cards about a year later)
Lots of holidays, good amount of vacation time.
Good training. Since the code I was writing was going into 170+ hospitals, there was a lot of focus on good coding techniques, peer reviews, etc. It's helped a lot since then.
No petty "is so-and-so making more than me?". The pay schedule covers everyone, so (for example) I knew what my boss made versus what I made.

-Govt:
Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork
In order for the budgets to work, our group pretty much couldn't buy anything from Oct->about August, then a mad buying frenzy from Aug->Oct 1 to use up the budget. The feds work on Oct->Oct fiscal year, and all the money is "use it or lose it". This often results in very strange purchasing habits (like 21" PC monitors in 1992).
Low pay, but promotions are pretty automatic up to a point, then it gets competitive.
Lots of management. As a result, there were reorganizations every 6 months or so. Also new ideas of management, so there was often times more time spent in meetings than actually working (sigh).

I would have stayed with the feds, but I wanted more money, and wanted a reason to move to an area with a bit more high-tech, so I went private-sector.

Just a bandaid.

[laetus]

Clocking in at 10+ years with the Feds, I can assure you this is just a bandaid to the problem of information technology management in the government. Why?

1) Many (but not all) government IT staff and IT managers are the last ones left behind. That is, much of the good IT and IT management staff moves on to the private sector, leaving behind the mediocre staff. That mediocre staff is what's left to rise to the top of government management. Why? Pay. Government refuses to compensate public sector IT workers what they're actually worth because (see #2).

2) Personnel management. It is virtually impossible inside the Federal government to get rid of IT staff that underperform. That is why Congress is so reluctant to raise pay rates because there ARE so many underperformers on the government IT payroll. If Congress would reform the civil service system so that a) under and non-performers could be fired, and b) managers could pay their good IT staff comparable private sector salaries, nearly 50% of the government's IT problems would evaporate. Don't believe me? We have one woman who didn't show up for work for 4-5 weeks!, rarely called in, and is still working for us. The government union is holding up her firing.

3) Procurement. If you've ever worked for the government and tried to get something major procured quickly for a fast turnaround project, you know the true meaning of irresistable force meets unmovable object. Procurement for IT managers needs to be streamlined so that they can get the hardware, software, and contract resources they need WHEN they need them.

My two cents. The problem is much deeper than staff rotation.

Re:April 1st is long past

[lynx_user_abroad]

This is not for you and me. This is not about exposing some of us to FORTRAN and the others to C++. The program is aimed at giving IT executives a chance to switch places.

The idea is to take someone with a large government budget to spend and indoctrinate them for 6 month or a year in some IT corporation, while at the same time giving a senior IT executive from the same company a chance to spend a half year or so meeting the players inside the government, learning what problems they face and recommending the best possible solution ("...which our company just happens to sell...") for those problems.

This is nothing more than legalized influence peddling. If I ran an IT company, I'd pay good money to get this program running, too.