"There doesn't seem to be that many people coming into IT, and no, it's not just about enough people."We're focusing on growing our own -- but when you skill them up you have a retention issue. Over the last couple of years it seems to have worsened a bit and we haven't seen any improvement yet."

The department's skills problem forced it to open an office in Sydney where the branch head of application development, Mark Webb, has hired around 150 staff for application development. Webb said there is probably a 10 percent shortfall in necessary IT staff, but it varies across skill sets, geographies, and experience.

"I've not had any trouble attracting new graduates but at the more experienced end of market it's more competitive," Webb said.

Finding suitable talent has also been a problem for SBS information systems manager Greg Koen, who recently sifted through more than 100 applications in six months to find the right person to fill a network security position.

"I had to replace someone who was here nine years and it's tough to get hold of someone good at Unix and networking," Koen said. "Networking, to a lot of people, means hooking Windows PCs together, but someone with deep knowledge of TCP/IP is a rare commodity."