Federal Career Opportunities in Computer Science Work Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. OBERNOLTE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, the Federal Career Opportunities in Computer Sciences Work Act.

Mr. Speaker, I, along with most of the country, was recently horrified by the cyberattacks against critical parts of our national infrastructure, in particular, the cyberattack against Colonial Pipeline that shut down gasoline deliveries for much of the Eastern United States and the cyberattacks against JBS meat processing, which disrupted operations at one of the largest food processing facilities in our country.

It has become increasingly clear that dealing with these threats will require highly trained professionals in the computer sciences and the data sciences as part of not just our civilian workforce but also our Federal workforce.

Unfortunately, many people are surprised to learn that we do not currently have Federal career occupational series that are dedicated to the computer sciences. This bill, the Federal Career Opportunities in Computer Sciences Work Act, will establish those series in such fields as data management, artificial intelligence, and software engineering. This will enable our Federal Government to better attract and retain the highly qualified technical computer scientist talent that is needed to respond to these attacks in the future.

This is bipartisan legislation. It is an easy and commonsense solution to this problem, and I urge support for this bill.

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