Diversity In Action

The Department of Homeland Security does some serious hiring

“We are on the front line of the cyber war,” says Margie Graves, deputy CIO. “We need cyber security pros to develop approaches to securing our network”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects to more than double its HQ-based staff in fiscal year 2010, says Margie Graves, deputy CIO.

Graves says she’s looking to hire 150 new employees, including engineers with IT backgrounds, program managers and program analysts.

DHS was created by an act of congress in the fall of 2002. Almost two dozen large and small federal agencies became part of DHS, including the U.S. Coast Guard, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Customs Service, and some agencies and services of the departments of energy, justice and defense.

Graves’ office has enterprise responsibilities. “We are responsible for management of the IT portfolio for DHS,” she says. “DHS was formed from numerous parts and pieces and now we’re going through an infrastructure transformation program, consolidating networks, data centers and our systems.”

The office of CIO for DHS has a number of goals, Graves explains. One of them is to continue cyber security improvements.

“We are on the front line of the cyber war. Next to the Department of Defense, we are the most targeted agency in terms of intrusions into our network. We will be hiring cyber security pros to work in the engineering field and develop approaches to securing our network.”

DHS will hire additional cyber security pros on the forensic side, people who monitor threats and do forensic analyses on where the threats originate. “We have cyber responsibility for the dot-gov community,” says Graves.

“We’re also working to establish a foundation for data collection and integration,” she says. “We’re looking for enterprise and data architects. Nothing happens in terms of transitioning unless you have targets and standards and commonality.”

Another goal is to establish government IT portfolios across departments to support DHS management objectives. “We are slowly setting up enterprise-level services,” Graves explains. “For instance, we’re establishing email as a service so all components can migrate to that.”

To recruit the employees to implement DHS IT goals, representatives visit colleges and universities, go to job fairs and reach out directly to veterans. “We target specific skill types,” Graves adds. “We participate in industry forums. We look at contractors.”

To ensure diversity in hiring, DHS national outreach includes SWE, NSBE, SHPE and other diversity-focused technical associations. There are also opportunities for students, including intern programs, temporary employment, and the Presidential Management Fellows program. “We’ve hired two or three from there, and they had great experience,” Graves notes.

D/C