to fix Microsoft Word or some other part of the infrastructure. It might be harder to feel the connection between that and citizen value," Chopra said.

His staff spends more time with those potential government thought leaders.

"Because the numbers for these kinds of individuals are so small, we have the ability to take a hands-on approach to attracting them," Chopra said.

With a nod toward flexibility, Virginia invites these workers to join the government as three- to six-month contract workers to see if they like working for the state.

 
Get Them Young
Some CIOs take a more expansive view of possible solutions to the IT worker shortage. In Missouri, Ross believes pitching the IT profession to college students is a short-term fix with limited promise.

"We're trying to look for more than just the next year's crop of college graduates. My sense is once someone's entered college, it's unlikely that you're going to turn them on to an IT career. There are several classes they'd need to take to graduate with an IT degree, and if they're off in an unrelated area, they may almost have to start over again," Ross said.

The state plans to target junior-high and high-school students. "We've surveyed high-school and middle-school counselors, and we found that they don't have much of a concept of what IT jobs are like, and they have no idea about IT jobs in the public sector," Ross explained.

He plans to set up events for counselors to "indoctrinate" them on the value of working in government IT.

"We'll wow them with our statistics about the [shortage] of people going in the IT pipeline and the monstrous increase in demand for IT jobs," Ross said.

He said he will also emphasize the value of health-care benefits to school counselors. "State government benefits are nothing to laugh at. In Missouri, we value those from 40 percent to 45 percent of the starting salary, and I don't think private industry can claim that," Ross explained.

Higashidani plans to implement a college internship in 2008 that would promise the interns jobs with the state of California once they receive their degrees.  

Higashidani blames weak student interest in IT majors on the fact that IT programs are lumped in with engineering schools at universities. Unless a student has an engineering interest, he or she likely won't learn much about the IT profession. Higashidani said she meets many IT students who say they found the IT field by accident.

"We're working with the colleges to see if they can create an information technology college to give this profession more excitement because enrollment is dropping and they're canceling classes," Higashidani said.

 
Island of Interest on Second Life
Some baby boomer IT leaders are taking advantage of technologies they might have previously thought to be silly in order to appeal to cutting-edge, young IT workers. A prime example is Second Life, a Web-based, 3-D virtual world where users can interact using an avatar, a graphical representation of themselves they can maneuver in the virtual world.

Ross and his staff created a presence in Second Life in conjunction with various Missouri libraries and universities to share space on what's called an "island of interest."

"We've been establishing our presence out there, working up information about IT jobs in Missouri, and really working on making our image out there bright and crisp," Ross said.

"You have to practice so that your avatar can move smoothly, walk around things, and not trip over them. It's much like a video game, and it seems odd, but there are 9 million entities out there. Just like the real world, there are things