The Government ICT Capability Strategy, released at the end of October 2011, responds to concern that the level of outsourcing within the public sector has drained the Government of the skills required to effectively project manage external suppliers. The ICT Capability Strategy complements the SIP and the other three 'sub-strategies' referred to above, seeking to address the 'people' aspect of future Government ICT.
Planned changes
The Government's challenge is how to continue building a body of experienced ICT professionals with the skills it needs to keep up with rapidly evolving technologies in an environment where the cyber threats are constantly changing.
To seek to address this, the strategy introduces a cross-government, profession-wide approach to the following:
- Development paths for ICT professionals.
- Curricula for ICT professionals.
- Progression standards.
- Managing talent and resources across departments.
- Sourcing training and development.
- Professional standards and accreditation.
Key milestones
While it is recognised that some of these changes will take a while to work through, the strategy does set out a number of key milestones, including:
- Use of contractors - central government ICT departments will have no more than 15% of their retained headcount filled by contractors by March 2015.
- Increased recruitment of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from within the public sector - 10 'graduates' of the CIO Academy by March 2015.
- A strong talent pipeline of successors for senior posts - 50 people in the IT Academy within three years.
