In his State of the Union Speech, President Obama set a national goal of training two million Americans so they can transition to 21^st century jobs.  As the leading global provider of vendor-neutral IT workforce certifications, CompTIA applauds this goal and stands ready to work with the Administration to meet this important challenge.

The IT industry relies on a high-skilled technical workforce that is able to adapt to new trends, innovate and remain globally competitive.  Two million employees within the domestic IT industry work for small and medium-sized businesses, which rely on the expertise of their workforce to provide the best services to their customers.

Right now, despite the uncertain economy, there are more than 300,000 IT and IT related jobs that are unfilled.  A critical gap exists between the open jobs and filling them with skilled workers.  Countless Americans will benefit from addressing this gap; and countless small IT companies will benefit from a better skilled workforce.  That’s where training and certification enter the picture.

CompTIA has issued more than 1.2 million certifications to individuals in the United States, providing employers the certainty that these workers have the necessary skills to fill the open IT slots.  We have already seen the power of career and technical education to transform lives and enhance small businesses.  Just from the work of our foundation, Creating IT Futures, we have compelling testimonies to the importance of certifications. Take the example of Timothy Burford, 34, a single father of two young children, who served in the U.S. Army for several years as a Humvee mechanic. After receiving an honorable medical discharge, Burford struggled to find mechanical work related to his military job, ultimately finding himself unemployed and homeless.  Due to help and training through the Fast Forward program, Burford was able to study and train for a CompTIA certification.  Today he has full-time IT work with the court system in Columbia, S.C.

For the nation to meet the workforce challenge the President has laid out, policies will need to focus on matching the training and education workers need to the skills employers and the market require.  Furthermore, professionals within the industry who are in need of re-training to adapt to new trends, technologies or market needs should have access to it.

Workforce expansion, however, has been somewhat hamstrung by a lack of accessible training and educational opportunities, which are often costly to employers and employees.  While advanced degrees are important in some cases, career and technical education are vital to the IT workforce.  Industry credentials are an important tool, for example, in providing core skills as well as specialized technical training. Increasing the access to these tools will not only help to build a stronger industry, but also will provide consumers with better products and services.  Consequently, CompTIA recommends:

1. Support the public workforce system (Workforce Investment Act and Perkins) so that those looking for work can get the guidance and training they need.
2. Provide the private sector with expanded tools to raise their game through training and certification. Namely we should amend the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit and the Business Deduction for Work-Related Education to make it easier to obtain the appropriate certifications and skills for the IT marketplace.

In addition to focusing on workforce training, the President mentioned several other proposals that can help jumpstart the IT sector. We appreciate the President's acknowledgement that "most new jobs are created in startups and small businesses."   And, we support his call to change regulations that impede access to capital, such as the Reg. A small business exemption.  Also, we think it is important to enact crowdfunding legislation that will streamline the ability of small businesses to raise equity capital, while still providing safeguards for investors.

We also fully support the President's call to "expand tax relief to small businesses that are raising wages and creating good jobs."  A good place to start is to extend the payroll tax cut to small businesses that are maintaining and creating the jobs required to support our economic recovery and to decrease the compliance cost for filing payroll tax returns by allowing more small businesses to file annual reports.