Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

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Ms. SEWELL of Alabama. Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of this bipartisan, common sense amendment that seeks to streamline and strengthen our Intelligence Community's (IC) cyber workforce. I am pleased to join my fellow colleague, Rep. ROONEY, who shares my deeply held desire to help meet the incredible need to raise the number of professionals in the critically important field of cybersecurity.

The recent breach of OPM which compromised the personal information of nearly 4 million federal employees further illustrates our urgent and immediate need to make substantial improvements to our cyber databases and overall cyber infrastructure. Cyberattacks have become increasingly common, and state sponsored bad actors pose a serious threat to our national security. These types of attacks are one of the most urgent modern challenges to our nation. Our government must be poised to do more to prevent future attacks. We must position ourselves to curtail any threat, no matter how great or small.

In December 2011, the National Science and Technology Council, in cooperation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), advanced a broad, coordinated federal strategic plan to enhance cybersecurity research and education. As part of this plan, the NSF launched the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program. In an effort to bolster our federal workforce's capacity and advance the nation's economic prosperity and national security, this program provides funding for undergraduate and graduate level scholarships to students interested in cybersecurity. In return, scholarship recipients are required to work for a Federal, State, Local, or Tribal Government organization in a position related to cybersecurity for a period equal to the length of the scholarship. In essence, students receive a scholarship in exchange for their commitment to federal civil service. This program seeks to cultivate pipelines for applicants from undergraduate and graduate programs into federal careers focusing on combatting emerging cyber security threats.

Leaders within the Intelligence Community tell me, however, that outdated policies and onerous clearance procedures are inhibiting their ability to fill industry vacancies with young and diverse cybersecurity professionals.

Our amendment simply requires the Intelligence Community to report to Congress on how many CyberCorps graduates actually go to work for the IC and how IC agencies recruit these CyberCorps graduates. This information will help Congress determine how we can best improve the hiring process.

I strongly believe that Congress should be facilitating ways to help the Intelligence Community hire these critically important CyberCorps graduates and create a pipeline directly into our cyber workforce.

I encourage my colleagues to vote yes on this amendment.

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