The FBI Stocks Up On IT Workers

The Federal Bureau of Investigation hired about 100 IT workers this year and expects to significantly hire more in 2003.

Of the 923 special agents hired between January and September, about 100 are technology professionals. But, says Joe Bross, FBI special agent in charge of recruiting, "We'll begin to see more significant IT numbers in the hiring we do now and going into next year."

The FBI's specialty--tracking and identifying confidential information--is drawing ever more deeply into computer science. "No matter what kind of information FBI agents are chasing, they need to have a background to know that the information hasn't been manipulated or altered," Bross says. "That need became more focused after Sept. 11, 2001," he adds.

Earlier this year, the FBI issued a special call for professionals in six disciplines, among them computer science, accounting, and language translation. The FBI ordinarily requires special-agent candidates to have five to 10 years of prior experience, but the bureau's waiving that for undergraduates with computer-science degrees. Specifically, the FBI is looking for those with superior problem-solving and programming skills in order to improve its intelligence operations.

And it's using the Internet to find the right candidates. For the first time, the FBI has made the application for special agents accessible online, at www.fbijobs.com. Concern that personal information might be intercepted online prevented doing so in the past, Bross says. Now, once the application is submitted, it's transferred from the FBI's public server to an internal, password-protected server.

Robert Lyons, the president of govITjobs.com, a new job board for people looking for government-contract work, says people are interested in pursuing IT careers with the government. "The size of the data the government tries to manage using advanced systems presents a lot of opportunity for IT professionals to enrich their skills and be challenged."