CIOs Face Skills Gaps

Chief information officers are seeing some gaping holes in the competencies of their IT staffs, in part thanks to rapidly changing technology, according to a new survey by CIO magazine and the MIT Center for Information Systems Research.

The survey of 370 IT leaders found that many companies are facing skills gaps in social media, collaboration and mobile technology. For example, 44 percent of CIOs said their companies lack collaboration expertise, while 27 percent said they lack expertise in evaluating mobile, tablet and other new technologies, the survey found.

Experts say CIOs have experienced a shift in how they undertake human capital planning. Whereas before they had a basic understanding of what skills were needed, that's less true now, experts told CIO.

In examining the shift, CIO highlights four emerging roles for technology professionals: hybrid business-IT experts, cloud-vendor managers, masters of data and analytics and designers of dynamic applications that mix social, collaboration and mobile technologies. But CIOs also should be prepared to pay a premium, as some of these new IT superstars will command six-figure salaries.

Are your agency's demands for IT skills changing? Can human capital plans and federal salaries keep up with the competition?