Digital has moved skills crisis into sharp focus, says digital delivery director, NHS Digital

Rachel Murphy adds her voice to the growing concern from IT leaders that the IT skills base in the UK cannot keep up with demand

The move to digital and desire for instant access are two recent trends which have driven up demand for IT skills in the UK, and recruiters are finding it harder than ever to find the right staff.

A growing number of CIOs and other IT leaders have told Computing recently about their troubles filling roles, and the latest is Rachel Murphy, digital delivery director at NHS Digital (NHSD).

"The skills shortage has been a challenge for as long as I have been in the IT game, which nearly 20 years now," said Murphy. "I think the advent of digital and a move to instant-access demand has really bought this into sharp focus for most CIOs over the last couple of years," she added.

Murphy explained that he likes to perform an extensive skills assessment whenever she takes on a new role, designed to find out what skills exist in the organisation.

"This I find is best achieved doing one-to-one interviews with all members of staff. It's a big undertaking, and most have not been through it before, but it assesses both technical, leadership and management capability and also desire and an understanding of what people actually want to be doing. We used www.bedifrent.com to do this at NHSD to provide a great baseline and then develop training plans and change our operating model off the back of this."

She said that recruiting permanent staff is now far harder than she would like.

"I often find the time to recruit permanent staff is the absolute killer. In our last assignment it took 100 days to hire people, and when you have ministerial milestones around your neck and perhaps more importantly patients waiting for digital services, this is just far too long.

"We ended up hiring ad hoc interims and changing our operating model to bring in vendors who had specific outcomes around cross-training permanent staff to help deliver our ambitious transformation. My gut feel is that this is still light and perhaps another 100 heads in some shape or form are needed for the digital patient portfolio alone."

According to Murphy it's user experience (UE) and user interface (UI) skills which are the hardest to find.

"And it's not just the theory of UE and UI, but the actual doing of it, and embedded commercial skills around who could procure digital outcomes at pace. When I joined we had one person who supported a domain of over 250 staff, as I left this had ramped up to five but was still lower than what was needed."

She argued that management skills can also often be lacking.

"The other piece I always find missing, and maybe I am a bit of a dinosaur saying this, is good old fashioned management skills. The absolute basics of one-to-ones, team meets, feeding back on performance, not just waiting for the annual review. Years on I can count on one hand the really solid managers I have met in my career."

Murphy's concerns come on top of similar complaints from Tom Clark, CIO of Leeds Building Society, and Joanna Smith, CIO at Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust.