Clinton asks for continual funding of IT study

The Clinton administration has asked Congress to permanently fund a governmentwide

study of federal information technology workers pay and position so that

to serve as a reference for future initiatives.

The Office of Personnel Management plans to complete its first IT occupational

study this year to determine the differences between the pay scales for

federal IT workers and their counterparts in the private sector.

OPM will use the study to validate the IT job profile model that describes

specific qualifications such as strategic thinking and computer languages,

required by employees in the GS-334 computer specialist and GS-391 telecommunications

series of jobs.

The information can support numerous initiatives and projects, including

the President's Federal Cyber Service initiative, which aims to expand the

number of information security professionals in government, said Mark Montgomery,

director of transnational threats at the National Security Council, speaking

this week at the National Colloquium for Information System Security Education.

The Clinton administration wants to provide OPM with $1 million annually

to conduct the study every two years. "It is our commitment to help OPM

find continual funding for that," Montgomery said.

The study requires a lot of time, and the IT arena changes so fast that

OPM should continually work on the study instead of waiting several years

before starting a new study, he said. With the position and salaries of

IT workers, that would put the federal government two to three years behind

the budget cycle, he said.