It’s a pleasure to be here in New Orleans, a city that is once again reminding us of America’s remarkable resilience and enduring spirit. New Orleans holds an important place in the cultural landscape of America, and I know that the residents of this city are working to ensure its vibrant culture is preserved.

While the city is best known for its culture, it is New Orleans’ strategic position at the mouth of the Mississippi that makes it critical to the nation’s economy. Today’s economy depends on the efficient and timely movement of goods all across the world and the port of New Orleans is the gateway to the nation’s heartland.

The just-in-time nature that defines the global economy was made possible by the tremendous advances in information technology over the last generation. In fact, it is fair to say that information technology is responsible for globalization. It facilitated the world-wide market for services and enabled the advanced logistics and supply chain management that is critical to the global manufacturing sector.

At its inception, information technology was characterized as an industry. Personal computer makers and software developers were its defining companies at the time. Then, the IT industry found itself at the forefront of the internet boom. As the driver of global innovation, information technology employees were connecting boardrooms a half a world a way, linking their local businesses to customers abroad, and ushering in the era of a newer, flatter world.

Over the next 10 years, IT departments became a staple for companies in nearly every trade, including transportation, healthcare, and financial services. Soon after, IT providers emerged as a viable alternative to full-fledged IT departments, and what was once a simply industry is now a hybrid manufacturer, service provider, and in-house department.

While the IT industry continues to evolve, information technology is now ubiquitous, an accepted part of nearly every job in the country. This presents some serious workforce challenges both to the IT industry, and to every other industry depending on workers with IT skills.

One solution to this problem has been to import talent from other countries through avenues such as the H-1B visa program. I believe that the United States has a strong interest in attracting the best and brightest minds from around the world to this country. It strengthens our economy and the skills they bring help to create additional jobs.

However, importing talent is not a long-term strategy for success. There are 300 million Americans today and we should be working to provide all them with the general IT skills they need to succeed in this economy while also producing the advanced skills required to work in the IT industry. Certainly, foreigners with advanced skills, whether in IT or any other field, should be welcome in this country, but we need to produce our own talent if we are going to continue to be the world leaders in information technology.

Producing that talent, of course, begins in our nation’s schools. The foundation of math and science skills laid throughout grade school and high school opens the gateway to the more advanced fields in engineering and technology. That is why so much of the President’s Competitiveness Agenda is focused on the development of these STEM skills. For the IT industry in particular, the basics of logic learned in mathematics leads directly to the programming and IT skills that so many in your industry require.

The Labor Department has been supporting the development of these skills through our career awareness activities. Specifically, we have developed a magazine series called InDemand which focuses on individual sectors of the economy, describing the occupations available in those industries and skills and education required to work in those fields. We have printed over 1 million copies of each issue of InDemand and sent them to every high school in the country. Our most recent issue addressed the specific occupations that require STEM skills. It profiled a dozen young people working in fields requiring advanced computing and math skills. We are going to continue this series into the next school year and will have an issue focused on the IT industry coming soon.

Reaching grade schoolers and high schoolers can prepare the next generation of IT professionals, but we must also do something about the need for IT skills right now. As the Assistant Secretary for Employment & Training, I administer a $15 billion system designed to provide adults with the education and skills they need to find and keep a job.

This system was created back in 1933 as one of the many New Deal programs and expanded continuously from the 1960s on. Most of the programs under this system were designed for the era when a high school education was all the economy required, and as a result, our programs were oriented more towards social services rather than education and training. Now that the economy has transformed, requiring workers to have a greater education and new sets of skills, it is incumbent upon us to keep pace.

So to better connect our system with jobs and education opportunities, the Administration created a series of initiatives designed to engage both employers and education institutions. The first is the High Growth Job Training Initiative. By partnering with employers and engaging educational institutions, the High Growth Initiative hopes to demonstrate to how to put employers back in charge of talent development.

Information technology is the industry, along with manufacturing, that defines the transformation of our economy. It, therefore, was an obvious selection as one of our industries of focus. To date, we have made over $8 million in investments under the High Growth Initiative focused specifically on the information technology industry. This includes the development of national IT apprenticeship certification program and the creation of software quality engineering curriculum leading to an industry-recognized certification.

These and other related programs are designed to provide skills and career pathways for individuals seeking to transition out of other industries and into information technology.

There are many investments that we have made in advanced manufacturing, geospatial technology, and other cutting edge fields which have IT components to them, once again demonstrating the penetration of information technology across the entire economy.