83 Percent of CIOs Plan to Hire in 2014

CIOs are planning to hire in 2014, which is great news for IT workers and anyone who uses digital government services. In fact, according to a recent survey from Robert Half Technology, 83 percent of surveyed CIOs plan to bring on more IT workers early in the new year. Despite tight budgets, state and local governments are prioritizing technology services because of the huge demand by citizens for better services. Qualified IT workers are also a long-term investment that should eventually help governments reduce overall costs as they transition to cloud-based services and infrastructure.

According to Nextgov, many governments will likely struggle to find the right candidate:

In addition, the survey of more than 2,300 U.S. CIOs found that fewer are planning to reduce or freeze hiring in the first half of 2014. Just 15 percent said they plan to put IT hiring on hold, down from 21 percent in the past six months, and just 2 percent said they plan to reduce their IT staff, down from 5 percent in July.

Still, CIOs are not expecting those open jobs to be easy to fill. The majority (63 percent) said it’s somewhat or very challenging to find skilled IT professionals today, though that number is down from 68 percent in the last half of 2013. It is most challenging to find skilled talent in the functional areas of networking (17 percent), security (14 percent) and help desk/technical support (13 percent).

More than half (57 percent) of technology executives said that network administration is among the skill sets in greatest demand within their IT departments. Windows administration and desktop support also are in high demand, each with 51 percent of the response.

Check out the infographic below for more information.