Sparked by heightened security concerns since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Defense Department has begun laying the groundwork to ban non-U.S. citizens from a wide range of computer projects.
The planned policy--slated for adoption within 90 days--extends restrictions on foreign nationals handling secret information to "sensitive but unclassified positions," which include the swelling numbers of contract workers who process paychecks, write software, track supplies and maintain e-mail systems.
The move comes amid a growing awareness of the vulnerability of government computer systems in an era when software espionage and malicious hacking have become commonplace.
The Defense Department's proposal, covering a work force that accounts for one-third of federal civilian employees, would represent the most sweeping implementation of the government's restrictions on foreign technology workers. The much-smaller Justice Department instituted little-noticed restrictions in July, and the Treasury Department has had a ban on noncitizens working on its communications systems since 1998.
Officials said the restrictions are needed to get a handle on the proliferation of foreign nationals who work on government computer systems, but the plan has raised concerns that the government is being xenophobic and shortsighted.
Experts said barring foreign nationals from certain computer projects opens the prospect that key jobs will go unfilled because of a shortage of qualified citizens--a situation exacerbated by the relatively small number of U.S. students who pursue advanced technology degrees. Costs may also rise sharply as higher-paid U.S. citizens replace foreign workers.
"You can easily create a critical manpower shortage," said Annalee Saxenian, a professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley who has studied the effect of immigrants on the technology industry. "There's probably no company in Silicon Valley that doesn't have from 10% to 40% of their work force who are foreign nationals. . . . [Defense Department officials may be] boxing themselves into a situation where they will lose the best talent."
Even Richard A. Clarke, top cyber-security advisor to President Bush, views the restrictions as a misguided priority.
"Rather than worry about what country somebody was born in, we ought to focus on the design and the architecture of our information systems," he said, adding that he supports the use of background checks, automatic recorders that log keystrokes by programmers and stricter rules on individuals changing data.
