Half of government IT jobs in 2023 do not exist today

Half of the job roles that chief information officers (CIOs) will manage in the public sector in four years’ time do not exist today, according to a Gartner study.

That is due to overall advances around digital transformation. According to the analyst firm, 53% of public sector organisations have moved past the early stages of modernisation and are delivering digitally driven outcomes, up from 40% last year.

In addition, government departments have become more comfortable with cloud delivery models. That move to digital technology means organisations are having to deal with processes that result in new or changed roles, with functions in areas such as datacentre management becoming less relevant.

The need to emphasise digital product management has also prompted the need to create internal teams to handle the design and delivery of services, the report stated.

Despite the ongoing changes, Gartner noted that 38% of government decision-makers polled did not introduce any new roles in 2018 due to insufficient resources, skills and cultural issues.

However, further developments around digital technology are expected to continue to add functions to the IT organisation or significantly change existing roles. Gartner predicts that public sector bodies will rely on government IT services to address inclusion, citizen experience and digital ethics, which require new types of expertise around research, design and social science.

As technologies around artificial intelligence and the internet of things (IoT) advance, the analyst foresees that machine trainers, conversational specialists and automation experts will slowly but surely replace professionals focused on legacy technologies.

“Government CIOs must employ experts to model and explain how citizens and businesses will need to respond to regulations and policies, and what impact that will have on society, the economy and government revenues,” said Cathleen Blanton, research vice-president at Gartner.

In addition, the analyst firm predicts that by 2023, over 80% of new technology solutions adopted by governments will be delivered and supported using an anything-as-a-service (XaaS) model.