The past few years have seen the biggest shake-up in the history of public sector IT.

Ambitious e-government, shared services, outsourcing and transformation programmes have sought to revolutionise the efficiency and service levels of public sector organisations. And securing the skills to ensure such programmes succeed is having a huge impact on public sector IT recruitment.

At the most senior level, there is a strong demand for effective business leaders with experience of driving through successful change and integration programmes.

Giles Sumner, public sector business development manager at IT recruiter Computer People, says high levels of commercial and technical competency are required, along with the ability to cope with highly challenging concepts and some of the largest integration projects in the UK.

However, with most of the initial e-government projects now complete or nearing completion, job opportunities at technical levels are fewer.

Mark Thomas, public sector specialist at IT recruiter www.theitjobboard.com, says the early part of the decade saw a boom in public sector IT recruitment.

‘Now the various e-government initiatives are, in the main, completed, the pressure is on to demonstrate the value derived from the big IT spend that they necessitated,’ he says.

As a result, Thomas says growth in IT recruitment is only seen in specialist areas such as data warehousing, business intelligence and database work.

‘Customer relationship management is also a key skill, so SAP skills are in demand. Another growth area is in the education sector, where e-learning has been gathering pace over the past three years,’ he says.

With the drive for efficiencies and improved service continuing throughout the public sector, business and soft skills are also becoming increasingly important.

Steve Saunders, director of recruitment consultancy STR Technology, says a greater emphasis on customer service within the public sector has driven a move towards best practice, with many organisations now embracing standards and processes such as ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library).

‘At the same time, users have become more sophisticated, resulting in the need for better-quality support staff. Many organisations are looking for more commercially minded people,’ he says.

One of the most in-demand commercial skills is the ability to manage and work with external IT partners, as the outsourcing trend continues apace. Indeed, many people working on public sector IT projects are today employed by private sector IT service providers.

Phil Johnson, of specialist technical recruiter CBSbutler, says there is an ever- increasing trend for public sector organisations to outsource major IT projects.

‘The private sector is more efficient at it, has the right experience and can usually do it at a much lower cost, which means that the real job opportunities are in the private sector,’ he says.

And Johnson says the opportunities to work on high-profile public projects are certainly out there, whoever is doing the hiring. ‘Whenever a government project is announced, or a policy put forward, IT seems to be at the heart of it. These schemes are massive in scale,’ he says.

‘The Defence Information Infrastructure, for example, is a £4bn, 10-year project, and consequently the demand for large numbers of IT bodies for different projects is growing all the time. Skill sets in demand include testers, solution architects and, of course, project managers.’

Steve Somerfield, of IT service provider Steria, agrees that there will be plenty of opportunities.

‘As the transformational agenda develops, we will see more demand for shared services, more demand for systems that support communities and neighbourhoods, and more demand for systems that can operate across organisational boundaries – for example, across health, local authorities, police and beyond,’ he says.

But in the coming years those who find themselves working for outsourcers may have the opportunity to switch – or switch back – to the public sector.

Mark Verghese, director of IT recruitment firm Greythorn, says that in the private sector there is a trend towards bringing work back in-house.

‘If the same happens in the public sector, many specialists working for outsourcers will have to make decisions about where to make their long-term careers,’ he says.