The Warner administration has delivered some very tough — but very necessary — news to employees of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. As Peter Bacque put it in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Despite official assurances that their jobs will be secure through Virginia’s information-technology outsourcing, state government IT employees cannot expect to remain in their jobs in retirement, officials now say.
“The whole concept of lifetime employment doesn’t exist anymore,” said Secretary of Technology Eugene J. Huang.
Don’t be surprised if a lot of people want to shoot the messenger. But Huang is only saying what needs to be said. No one in the private sector enjoys lifetime employment. Employees’ only security comes from their ability to stay employable by embracing the skills required by a fast-evolving economy.
State employees are insulated from direct competition in the sense that state employees from North Carolina or Texas aren’t going to take away their jobs. But Virginia companies compete in a global economy, and their social overhead includes the cost in taxation of supporting state government. As the Warner administration seems to understand, the state cannot continue doing Business as Usual. (If only the Warnerites would apply insights gleaned from the reforming government processes to fundamentally restructuring the way the state approaches education, transportation and health care!)
The Commonwealth is negotiating with IBM and Northrop Grumman to privatize significant chunks of its computer and electronic-communications infrastructure. If a deal is struck, it could be, according to Bacque, “the farthest-reaching such outsourcing among U.S. state governments.” More than 2,000 state employees could see their jobs directly affected.
VITA has promised no mass layoffs, but a lifetime sinecure in state government is not in the cards. “My generation has . . . been told that lifetime employment is not a given,” said Huang, who is 29. “Over the course of one’s lifetime, one can expect upwards of six or seven different jobs.”
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Virginia’s other cabinet secretaries were delivering the same message?
