Why I Am Optimistic About IT.

For the IT sector, the employment news has not been good for quite a while. It seems like every day we pick up the paper and read about another .com or blue chip tech company that's laying off hundreds or thousands of workers. Contrary to past decades, Victoria is feeling it. Normally immune to recessions and economic shifts, we can attribute this change to the fact that by the year 2000 we finally joined the global community. Compounding this North American trend is the recent news that the BC Government is cutting jobs across the board.

In this atmosphere it would be easy to become dismayed at employment prospects in the IT sector in Victoria. This would be a mistake you could easily make if you are not aware of how the IT industry in Victoria works. The majority of IT professionals in Victoria work for the BC Government, municipal governments, or private sector companies that survive almost exclusively on government contracts. Here are some of the factors and trends which I think will increase IT employment next year.

Liberal government - look who's on their technology council. Almost all the members are from the private sector with strong links to companies like Microsoft, IBM, or PricewaterhouseCoopers. It's payback time now that the election is behind them and the private sector will be hiring as soon as the governments "core review" process is complete late this year or the first quarter of 2002. If you reviewed their recent first report you can see the potential realization of this scenario.

Cuts to government staff - I have been through this exercise while on a training program some years ago as a provincial government employee. We were put in a room with the budget and told to cut X number of dollars from the annual budget. As our BC Ministry of Finance trainers pointed out, cutting staff drives up the need for government to hire more consultants. The consulting companies will reap the rewards of this process as will those whom they hire to fill the need. As an aside, I went through the same process some years ago when BC Systems was shut down, so I am not without compassion for these folks.

Cross government initiatives - the liberals are looking to create "cross-government initiatives". Translated, this means having one department or system service more than one government ministry or crown corporation. These are large systems. To create these new systems they will have to hire business analysts, project managers, developers, and administrators. Consider their recent contract offering for a new $1.8M Internet Portal to dispense government services. The first of many they say.

The .com meltdown - this is a normal market adjustment that I am sure no economist is surprised at. Those who are thinking in time frames of months, quarters, or years are failing to see the big picture. New industries always go through a boom/bust cycle and it takes decades to cycle through it. It has been happening since the first railroads crossed America. What happens after the bust? It is followed by a gradual, more realistic growth pattern based on sound business, not investment, as large companies consolidate their territories. The gold rush days may be over but look forward now to steadily growing IT employment where the jobs you do get are more secure.

E-government - this is a trend across North America and the Canadian federal government and our provincial government are among the keenest players. They want to be 100% web based service delivery if possible. Sure the .com meltdown has taken out a few employers, but government isn't going away and they are not going to back off on their e-government initiatives. It may not be dramatic enough to make the news, but e-government is a huge driver of IT employment that will not slow down for several more years at least.

Sept. 11th - This unfortunate turn of events will drive up the need to "armor" existing information systems around the world. This will require new staff and positions. Additional new positions will be required to analyze, develop, implement, and administer new security systems, including logical and physical security systems. Computer systems will be required for information mining (to look for patterns found only by analyzing a variety of data sources), biological and chemical analysis, new communications systems, and biometrics, to name a few. Having worked in high security areas of the BC government, I can tell you they will be no slouch in this process and federal dollars will be flowing into provincial coffers for it one way or another.

In view of the above trends, look for an upturn in IT employment in Victoria beginning early next year. I am betting on Q1, Q2 at the latest. The challenge now is that you are competing with the many others laid off across North America in the last year - those guys with 20 years at Nortel and CISCO certification. The strategy is to improve your resume, interview, and other soft skills with which you will win the job competition.

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