Earlier this year, independent Senator Rex Patrick wrote to every Minister in the Morrison Government asking what their agencies are doing to identify, recruit, and train for IT, digital, data, and cyber skills.

Patrick asked about known and projected staffing requirements, recruitment challenges, skill testing, upskilling and reskilling, and any known obstacles to hiring and retaining talent.

The Ministerial responses were extremely varied in their depth of response to Patrick’s questions and in the degree of effort agencies are willing to undertake to attract and retain ICT talent.

Some Ministers provided bureaucratic answers or ignored the questions altogether.