All Times EDT
Keywords: IT education, human capital assets, mixed methods
The purpose of the mixed-methods study is to examine if there is a relationship between IT technical needs competencies and the level of IT technical needs expertise of IT staff to strengthen the 21st Century Workforce within an organization in the next five years. The results will support the human capital management with the implementation of a modernize strategic and operational plans to improve professional and career development of existing IT workforce while reducing technical competencies gaps between existing and future IT technical needs. The mixed-methods study was conducted on two phases study: Phase 1, 105 out of 453 IT supervisors invited to participate completed the 46 closed-ended Likert-scale questions classified on ten categories between April 1st and April 30, 2018 for a response rate of 23.1%. and explored which IT technical needs skills were needed by IT staff in 21st Century to address the organization’s mission. Phase 2, 376 out of 878 IT employees participated and completed the 46 closed-ended Likert-scale questions classified on ten categories between June 1st and June 30, 2018 for a response rate of 42.8% examined the level of IT technical needs of expertise self-reported by IT staff of the top-two technical competencies identified on Phase 1. The results of Phase 1 indicated that the top five IT technical needs competencies identified by IT supervisors where big data, cloud, program and planning management, cybersecurity/security, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Meanwhile, Phase 2 results showed that top five level of IT technical needs expertise self-reported as Experts were User and Customer Support, Systems Administration, Administration and Management, Information Assurance, and Information Technology Architecture. The results of the analysis of variance concluded that there is a relationship between IT technical needs competencies and the level of IT technical needs expertise of IT staff for a P-value less than 0.05.