The DHS S&T Directorate: Selected Issues for Congress

Dana A. Shea
Specialist in Science and Technology Policy

Policymakers generally believe that science and technology can and will play significant roles in improving homeland security. When Congress established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296), it included the Directorate of Science and Technology (S&T) to ensure that the new department had access to science and technology advice and capabilities for research and development (R&D).

The S&T Directorate is the primary organization for R&D in DHS. It conducts R&D in several DHS laboratories and funds R&D conducted by other government agencies, the Department of Energy national laboratories, academia, and the private sector. Additionally, the directorate supports the development of operational requirements and oversees the operational testing and evaluation of homeland security systems for DHS. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 provided direction and broadly defined functions for the Under Secretary for Science and Technology and the S&T Directorate. Within this broad statutory framework, Administration and congressional policymakers face many challenges, including balancing funding for R&D activities, which may not result in a deployable product for many years, with other near-term homeland security needs.

Despite several restructurings and close congressional oversight, the S&T Directorate continues to face difficulties in meeting congressional expectations. The 113th Congress may consider several policy issues related to the performance of the S&T Directorate. These include

• priority-setting mechanisms for the directorate’s R&D programs, such as strategic planning and targeting high-priority investments; 
• the scope of the directorate’s R&D activities, such as balancing incremental efforts with efforts that offer high risk, but high reward; 
• efforts to consolidate or disperse R&D activity in or away from the S&T Directorate; and 
• the directorate’s role in the DHS acquisition process, both in identifying operational requirements and assessing operational effectiveness.

Date of Report: May 3, 2013
Number of Pages: 28
Order Number: R43064
Price: $29.95

To Order:

R43064.pdf  to use the SECURE SHOPPING CART

e-mail congress@pennyhill.com

Phone 301-253-0881

For email and phone orders, provide a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card number, expiration date, and name on the card. Indicate whether you want e-mail or postal delivery. Phone orders are preferred and receive priority processing.

The U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Recent, Current, and Projected Employment, Wages, and Unemployment

John F. Sargent Jr.
Specialist in Science and Technology Policy

The adequacy of the U.S. science and engineering workforce has been an ongoing concern of Congress for more than 60 years. Scientists and engineers are widely believed to be essential to U.S. technological leadership, innovation, manufacturing, and services, and thus vital to U.S. economic strength, national defense, and other societal needs. Congress has enacted many programs to support the education and development of scientists and engineers. Congress has also undertaken broad efforts to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills to prepare a greater number of students to pursue science and engineering (S&E) degrees. Some policymakers have sought to increase the number of foreign scientists and engineers working in the United States through changes in visa and immigration policies.

Many policymakers, business leaders, academicians, S&E professional society analysts, economists, and others hold diverse views with respect to the adequacy of the S&E workforce and related policy issues. These issues include the question of the existence of a shortage of scientists and engineers in the United States, what the nature of such a shortage might be (e.g., too few people with S&E degrees, mismatched skills and needs), and whether the federal government should undertake policy interventions to address such a putative shortage or to allow market forces to work in this labor market. Among the key indicators used by labor economists to assess occupational labor shortages are employment growth, wage growth, and unemployment rates.

In 2011, there were 5.9 million scientists and engineers employed in the United States, accounting for 4.6% of total U.S. employment. Science and engineering employment was concentrated in two S&E occupational groups, computer occupations (56%) and engineers (25%), with the rest accounted for by S&E managers (9%), physical scientists (4%), life scientists (4%), and those in mathematical occupations (2%). From 2008 to 2011 S&E employment increased by 99,550, rising to 5.9 million, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.6%, while overall U.S. employment contracted at 1.7% CAGR. Viewed only in aggregate, the overall increase in S&E employment masks the varied degrees of growth and decline in the detailed S&E occupations.

In 2011, the mean wage for all scientists and engineers was $85,700, while the mean wage for all other occupations was $43,300. Between 2008 and 2011, the mean wages of each S&E occupational group grew more slowly (1.5%-2.2% CAGR) than the mean wage for all occupations (2.3% CAGR).

Compared to the overall workforce, the S&E occupational groups had significantly lower unemployment rates for the 2008-2011 period. In general, though, the professional occupations (of which the S&E occupations are a part) historically have had lower unemployment rates than the workforce as a whole. In 2011, the overall S&E unemployment rate of 3.9% was higher than for other selected professional occupations, including lawyers (2.1%), physicians and surgeons (0.6%), dentists (0.7%), and registered nurses (2.0%).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the number of science and engineering jobs (as defined in this report) will grow by 1.1 million between 2010 and 2020, a growth rate (1.7% CAGR) that is somewhat faster than that of the overall workforce (1.3%). In addition, BLS projects that a further 1.3 million scientists and engineers will be needed to replace those projected to exit S&E occupations. Growth in the S&E occupational groups is projected to range from 1.0%-2.0% CAGR. The number of scientists and engineers needed to meet growth and net replacement needs between 2010 and 2020 is 2.4 million, including 1.4 million in the computer occupations and 525,900 engineers.


Date of Report: May 6, 2013
Number of Pages: 40
Order Number: R43061
Price: $29.95

To Order:

R43061.pdf  to use the SECURE SHOPPING CART

e-mail congress@pennyhill.com

Phone 301-253-0881

For email and phone orders, provide a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card number, expiration date, and name on the card. Indicate whether you want e-mail or postal delivery. Phone orders are preferred and receive priority processing.

Information Attack: Information Warfare In 2025

Information Attack is defined by the USAF as either “directly corrupting adversary information without changing visibly the physical entity in which it resides.” or “activities taken to manipulate or destroy an adversary’s information without visibly changing the physical entity within which it resides.”

This essay argues that the proper understanding and future development of information attack, based on USAF information warfare competencies and systems, is the key to information dominance. It is likewise argued that a central obstacle to a future information warfare capability is that the words and definitions currently used among the Joint Staff and the armed forces to guide future development in IW are unclear, confused, and often contradictory as they fail to distinguish IW from Command and Control Warfare (C2W) and fail completely to incorporate USAF views on information attack.

The future potential in information warfare to substitute precise and discriminate credible information— whether by the methods of C2W (deception, PSYOP, or other means) or information attack— to a precise and discriminate target decision maker is the essence of decisive maneuver as it may position the adversary in space and time, by his own decision, in a fatally disadvantageous strategic situation. Information attack is not so much perception management as orientation management. Information is both the target and the weapon: the weapon effect is predictable error.

In future operating environments marked by ambiguity, speed, and precision effect, it will be the relative or differential advantage in information, information processing, and communication and information security that will provide the narrow margin for victory. Future USAF mastery of information attack, through air and space power unconstrained by artificial notions of battlefield-only command and control warfare, will provide the capability for asymmetric strategic response based on decisive and differential information advantage.



Date of Report: May 1, 2013
Number of Pages: 40
Order Number: G1372
Price: $5.95

To Order:

G1372.pdf  to use the SECURE SHOPPING CART

e-mail congress@pennyhill.com

Phone 301-253-0881

For email and phone orders, provide a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card number, expiration date, and name on the card. Indicate whether you want e-mail or postal delivery. Phone orders are preferred and receive priority processing. 

The FCC’s Authority to Regulate Net Neutrality After Comcast v. FCC

Kathleen Ann Ruane
Legislative Attorney

A major debate over the government’s role with respect to the Internet is currently occurring. Legally, one of the major questions appears to be whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) currently has the authority to regulate the ways in which Internet service providers (ISPs) manage Internet traffic over their networks. The FCC adopted an Internet Policy Statement in 2005 that expressed the agency’s support for a policy of nondiscrimination toward Internet traffic, subject to reasonable network management.

In 2007, through various experiments by the media, most notably the Associated Press, it became clear that Comcast was intermittently blocking the use of an application called BitTorrent™ and, possibly, other peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs on its network. Comcast eventually admitted to the practice and agreed to cease blocking the use of the P2P applications on its network. However, Comcast maintains that its actions were reasonable network management and not in violation of the FCC policy. In response to a petition from Free Press for a declaratory ruling that Comcast’s blocking of P2P applications was not “reasonable network management,” the FCC conducted an investigation into Comcast’s network management practices. The FCC determined that Comcast had violated the agency’s Internet Policy Statement when it blocked certain applications on its network and that the practice at issue in this case was not “reasonable network management.” The FCC declined to fine Comcast because its Internet Policy Statement had never previously been the basis for enforcement forfeitures. Comcast appealed this decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, as did other public interest groups.

The D.C. Circuit ruled on April 6, 2010, that the FCC could not base ancillary authority to regulate cable Internet services solely upon broad policy goals contained elsewhere in the Communications Act. Whatever the merits of other jurisdictional arguments the FCC may advance, the court found that the FCC did not have jurisdiction to enforce its network management principles on the basis it had advanced in that case. The court did not address the other questions posed by the case, including whether the FCC could proceed via adjudication.

The court’s ruling has thrown into doubt the FCC’s authority to regulate Internet network management. On December 21, 2010, the Commission adopted new open Internet rules in its Open Internet Order. The Commission cited Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as well as authority ancillary to its statutory mandates in Titles II, III, and VI of the Communications Act of 1934. Two commissioners dissented. Commissioner McDowell published a lengthy rebuttal to the Commission’s jurisdictional argument in his dissenting statement. This report will analyze both the Commission’s jurisdictional arguments and Commissioner McDowell’s counter-arguments. The most recent rules were published in the Federal Register on September 23, 2011. The rules have been challenged in court. The appeals by various parties have been consolidated in the D.C. Circuit. As of April 23, 2013, oral arguments in the case had yet to be scheduled. However, the parties have submitted their briefs to the court, and the case is expected to proceed.

For further information on the policy aspects of this debate, see CRS Report RS22444, Net Neutrality: Background and Issues, by Angele A. Gilroy.


Date of Report: April 29, 2013
Number of Pages: 28
Order Number: R40234
Price: $29.95

To Order:

R40234.pdf  to use the SECURE SHOPPING CART

e-mail congress@pennyhill.com

Phone 301-253-0881

For email and phone orders, provide a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card number, expiration date, and name on the card. Indicate whether you want e-mail or postal delivery. Phone orders are preferred and receive priority processing.