4.4 The Committee of Public Accounts had concerns that the Cabinet Office did not know the number of ICT people in government or what capacity and skills it will need in the future. In 2011 the NAO reported:
• forty per cent of senior staff from across government identified 'very' or 'fairly' significant gaps in ICT skills in their organisations;13 and
• chief information officers had gaps in ICT capacity and capability which would significantly affect ICT infrastructure in their departments. These gaps included contract and supplier skills management; stakeholder management; and programme and project management.14
4.5 The Government is intent on improving ICT skills in government and the Government CIO is head of the Government ICT profession. He chairs an ICT Profession Board comprising ICT and learning and development specialists from across the public sector and industry. This team produced the Government ICT Capability Strategy (the Capability Strategy), published on 28 October 2011.
4.6 The key component of the Capability Strategy is a framework for career development in the ICT profession. Civil servants who consider themselves ICT professionals will use the framework to identify the skills, experience and learning and development they need to progress in their careers. The initiatives will therefore produce outcomes, such as reducing reliance on contractors and external recruitment, in the medium to long term.
4.7 We are concerned that the important technical skills, including cloud computing and 'agile' delivery methods, which are needed in the short term in departments and agencies to implement the new ICT solutions, are not available. Government also lacks key business skills. Although it has outsourced ICT systems development and services for many years, our reports have often stated that government is not good at managing commercial relationships and contracts or procurement.15 Indeed, suppliers told us that they doubted whether government had the appropriate skills to move from using one major supplier to deliver ICT solutions and services, to managing many suppliers of different sizes providing different services.
4.8 The Committee recommended that the Cabinet Office should establish the size and capabilities of the existing government ICT workforce and build a model to help predict future demand. The Australian government has a whole of government ICT Strategic workforce plan, which quantifies the number of professionals to be recruited in the three-year period to 2011-12.16 Our review of the Capability Strategy shows that the Cabinet Office's plan to identify the right shape and scale of ICT profession for departments' future in-house ICT services falls short of producing an overall workforce model of this type.
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13 Comptroller and Auditor General, Identifying and meeting central government's skills requirements, Session 2010-12, HC 1276, National Audit Office, 13 July 2011.
14 Comptroller and Auditor General, A snapshot of the Government's ICT profession in 2011, 25 October 2011.
15 Comptroller and Auditor General, Commercial skills for complex government projects, Session 2008-09, HC 962, National Audit Office, 6 November 2009, Comptroller and Auditor General, Central government's management of service contracts, Session 2008-09, HC 65, National Audit Office, 19 December 2008.
16 Australian Government, Whole‑of‑government ICT strategic workforce plan 2010‑2013, April 2010.