IT Pros Brushing up for Obama White House

Information technology professionals are antsy for Obama, who they believe will boost the number of technology jobs.

Information Week: There's a little more than a month before President-elect Barack Obama gets sworn in. Based on the hints he's provided so far about his economic stimulus plans and other programs, some pundits are predicting that demand for IT jobs will take off, especially in key sectors.

"This will be the second best of times for IT people," after the dot-com boom, predicts Rob McGovern, CEO of online job matching site, JobFox, in an interview with InformationWeek.

"Our economy is an information-based economy, and Obama's $700 billion economic stimulus programs will create millions of new jobs -- and that means it's a good time to be an IT person," he says.

Some sectors will be particularly promising for tech talent, says McGovern. That includes health care. Obama has said a major component of his economic recovery plan focuses on building a health care IT infrastructure and promoting the use of electronic medical records by doctors.

As you probably know, the Bush administration also pushed the adoption of health IT, including the creation of a national, interoperable health information highway. While progress has been made in the adoption of e-medical record systems by hospitals and doctors over the last several years, there's still by far a much bigger reliance on paper than digital records in health care. Obama's expected to put more funding behind various health care IT-related initiatives. Under Obama's administration, McGovern expects the health care industry's demand will strengthen for a variety of IT talent, including software developers, security experts, and bio-informatics specialists.