Not all skills are needed by all information technology employees. Instead, specific skill sets are associated with the type of work an employee performs. We therefore analyzed skill proficiency ratings within job specialties. Table 6 lists the high proficiency skills reported by respondents in each job specialty area. These are the skills whose mean proficiency ratings were the equivalent of “intermediate” (a mean of 3.0 on a 5-point scale) or higher in the survey results.

Overall, New York State’s IT employees report high levels of proficiency in many skills that seem essential to their job specialties. For example, technology managers have high proficiency ratings in management competency skills such as supervision, leadership, and communication. Database administrators and analysts reported their highest proficiency ratings in skills associated with systems and database techniques, while programmers report high proficiency ratings in key programming and systems principles. Other technical specialists have high proficiency ratings in areas such as support and maintenance. (See Table E5 in Appendix E for a complete list of skill means by job specialty.)

Table 6. Top 10* skills with high proficiency ratings by job specialty (listed in order of mean proficiency ratings, starting with highest)

Technology managers	Database specialists	Data communications & telecommunications specialists	Operations specialists
Supervisory skills Leadership Written communication Managing agency staff Planning & evaluation Oral communication Principles of programming Organizational awareness & business knowledge Project management Managing consultant staff	Principles of programming Database design & development standards Database applications development techniques Written communication COBOL Windows operating system Structured system analysis & design principles System life cycle planning principles Testing & evaluation Oral communication Principles of operating systems	Windows operating system Principles of operating systems Network configuration Written communication	Mainframe operations Principles of operating systems Windows operating system Supervisory skills
Programmers	Other Technical Specialists	Business Specialists	Systems specialists
Principles of programming Windows operating system Written communication Principles of operating systems Oral communication	Windows operating system Principles of operating systems Support for desktop applications Help desk activities Hardware maintenance & support Customer service	Written communication Oral communication Leadership Supervisory skills Customer service Windows operating system	Principles of operating systems Principles of programming Windows operating system Written communication Oral communication

* High proficiency is defined as a rating of 3.0 or higher on a 5-point scale. Not all specialties had 10 skills that met this criterion.