Summary of recent article by Danny Bradbury in the London Evening News.
IT professionals are in particular demand by both local and central government, according to figures released by the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo) and this has caused salaries to skyrocket.
The figures, which were the result of more than 6000 responses from IT recruiters, highlighted a disparity between pay in the private and public sectors. The organisation’s iProfile skills survey suggests that IT experts working for the Government earn an average of £31 per hour, compared with £24 per hour for IT professionals working in media companies. Government workers also beat IT workers in the engineering and electronics sectors.
Ann Swain, chief executive of ATSCo, says that public sector IT work has always been something of a backwater, however, things are looking up, as a need for modernisation creates new opportunities for contractors.
Research firm Ovum Holway believes that public sector IT spending will grow by an average of 9% per annum between 2002 and 2005, compared to 0.3% for the private sector.
Outsourcing public sector contracts to private services companies is big business. The NHS has been seeking service providers for its £2.3 billion technology overhaul and, according to IT journal Computer Weekly, the amount of spending on public sector IT will increase by nearly a quarter from last year, reaching almost £12.5 billion in 2003.
The Government has a 2005 deadline for delivering all of its services electronically, which would give citizens more choice in the way that they interact with local and central government and the deadline is looming.
With this in mind, Swain says that these considerations are causing the Government to spend more money on contractors and permanent staff, but that contractors are experiencing particular benefits from the investment hike.