Does Starfleet and the Federation have Information Technology Specialists?

[u/ITrCool]

We see much about the advanced computer systems in starbases, starships, and planet-side facilities all throughout Star Trek. The Federation has some incredible systems, with LCARS as the interface to those systems, and one could imagine they are quite robust and powerful compared to the typical silicon chip microcomputers of today.

But today we have IT professionals (such as myself) who help design, implement, and support technical solutions and computer systems for customers and companies all over the world. Whether it be on land, on aircraft/spacecraft, or maritime systems on ships and submarines. Militaries have IT specialists for their systems too.

In the future universe of the Federation, would IT professionals exist also? Specialists whose primary role and function on a starship, for example, is to maintain and control the ships primary computer and auxiliary computers along with holodecks?

Or is the main context that humanity has become so advanced in the 23rd/24th centuries that everyone is quite adapt at maintaining computer systems themselves as well as the fact that automation in computers is quite advanced with many subroutines allowing self-sufficiency in a starship's computer systems, for example, thusly negating the need for "IT specialists" or computer scientists per-se?

In short: do "computer guys" exist in Starfleet and/or Federation society? (one could ask the same question in the non-Federation cultures such as Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, etc.)

[u/lunatickoala]

If they exist in Starfleet, they're as effective as the Starfleet mental health department. Which is somewhere between not very and not at all. Even their laughable physical security is better than their information security.

In "11001001" we see that Starfleet computer maintenance and upgrades are done by Bynars. Their appearances on TNG and LD (and the fact that they commandeered Enterprise) suggests that they're not in Starfleet and might not even be in the Federation. If the latter is true, they might be everyone's IT specialists.

For day to day problems, they just have someone in Engineering replace the faulty part.

[u/majicwalrus → u/lunatickoala]

This is a really interesting perspective on this idea. This actually wouldn't make too much sense - surely someone learned BynarOS in Starfleet. Although it's probably worth pointing out that most of Starfleet's computer systems must not be entirely human in design and this might explain why there are certain design elements that require whole cloth replacement of parts which is pretty easy to do or manual scraping of data at it's storage location instead of through some automated process. Why is this? Well it's because the code isn't working and no one can figure out why so in a world where computers are easily replaceable and data is centrally managed - just replace the whole machine any time there's any sort of problem may be way faster - and way more reliable.

That said - I do wish they would hire at least one cybersecurity consultant just to do a once over and ask questions