On February 4, President Bush sent Congress a $2.13 trillion budget for Fiscal Year 2003 (FY03) which brings good news for the nation's scientists: Uncle Sam wants YOU.

The FY03 budget is 431 pages long (not including the appendices) and for the first time, it has a slick new cover and is printed on glossy paper with color and photographs. Making sense of the graphs, tables, and columns of numbers prose is a challenge. But one important fact emerges: a massive influx of government dollars will be coming to science and, presumably, to science employment within the next year. A closer look at these new levels of funding and the institutions and initiatives they will support provides provocative clues to which types of employment opportunities may soon be available where.

In this year's State of the Union address, the President outlined the Administration's three primary goals:

• Winning the war on terrorism;
• Homeland security; and
• Restoring economic growth.

Clearly, the Administration believes that science and technology will be the engine that drives each of these goals-the total federal investment in R&D requested for FY03 is a record $111.8 billion, up 8.3% over FY02. Here are some highlights of what the new budget means for science and scientific employment.

Research & Development

Nearly the entire FY03 budget increase would go just to the Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The proposed increase for DOD is $5.4 billion and $3.9 billion for NIH. Nondefense R&D would increase nearly 8%, or $3.8 billion, to $53.2 billion. NIH makes up almost half of the entire nondefense R&D budget; other agencies receiving smaller increases are the Veterans Administration (VA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NASA, and National Science Foundation (NSF).

Basic research in FY03 would grow 8.5% or $2.0 billion to $25.5 billion. Basic research at NIH would go up nearly 10% because of a new emphasis on applied research on cancer and bioterrorism.

The total FY03 budget submitted for NIH is up 16% to $25.7 billion. This increase for NIH is responsible for most of the increase in the total federal investment in basic and applied research ($51.8 billion). Excluding NIH, total federal research would be $26.1 billion in FY03.

Multi-Agency Initiatives

There are three major national initiatives that would receive increases in FY03.

Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology Initiative - This started out under the Clinton Administration as the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The goals include facilitating interagency collaboration for nanoscale R&D and providing a framework for establishing federal R&D priorities and budget. The participating departments and independent agencies are the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Commerce (DOC), National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST), DOD, Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Justice (DOJ), CIA, Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Treasury (DOTreas), Department of State (DOS), EPA, NASA, NIH, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and NSF. The requested budget increase for this initiative in FY03 is $100 million, 17.3%, to $679 million.

Networking and Information Technology R&D Initiative - Formerly known as the Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century (IT²) initiative, this initiative has three components: (1) fundamental information technology research; (2) advanced computing for science, engineering and the nation as a whole; and (3) research on the economic and social impact of the information revolution. As NSF has strong programs in all three areas, it is the lead agency and will continue its lead role. The budget for this initiative would increase 2.5% to $1.9 billion. NSF's contribution in this area is primarily through the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate.

US Global Change Research Program - This program works with research institutions in the US and abroad to improve scientific knowledge of global climate changes and to understand how those changes affect humans and the environment. The program's budget would increase 5% to $1.8 billion, with NASA's Earth Science program providing most of the funding. The proposed budget also includes $40 million in new funds for the Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI), which funds fundamental research in climate science.

NIH and DOD Funding Highlights

NIH. As NIH's lead institute for bioterrorism R&D and a key part of the Administration's homeland security request, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is the biggest beneficiary and would receive $4.0 billion under the FY03 budget. NIAID is also the lead institute in AIDS research, which would increase to $2.8 billion. Other funding priorities highlighted in the budget are:

1. Cancer - Cancer research would receive $5.5 billion; $4.7 billion would go to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
2. Buildings and Facilities - This budget would nearly double to $633 million; the funds would go to improving NIH laboratory security, building new facilities for bioterrorism research, and finishing construction of NIH's new Neuroscience Research Center.

DOD. After a record increase of $7 billion in FY02, DOD would receive a $5 billion increase in FY03 to a $54.6 billion R&D budget. Most of the increase would not go to research, rather, but to developing weapons systems. Despite the record budgetary increases, basic and applied research in DOD remains flat and in fact, DOD S&T would drop 2% to $9.7 billion. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would gain a 19.2% increase to $2.7 billion. DARPA is a central research and development organization for DOD. According to its Web site, DARPA manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DOD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions. The increase for DARPA includes a 23% increase for Defense Research Sciences, which includes DARPA's basic research portfolio.

OTHER FUNDING HIGHLIGHTS IN BRIEF

The NSF budget would increase 5% to $5 billion and NSF R&D would be $3.7 billion, up 3.6%. In the Mathematics and Physical Sciences directorate, chemistry, physics, and astronomy budgets would decline while the mathematics budget would increase 20%.

NASA's total budget would increase 1.4% to $15.1 billion. NASA's R&D gets the lion's share of that budget, $10.1 billion, up 5.3%. While spending on Human Space Flight would decline, R&D in Science, Aeronautics and Technology would go up to about $9 billion. Space Science funding would also go up to $3.4 billion.

The Department of Energy (DOE) R&D budget would fall 8% to $8.5 billion. Funding for the Office of Science stays the same at $3.3 billion but most programs would receive increases.

The total budget request for NIST was $577.5 million and is directed toward three areas: $402.2 million for Scientific and Technical Research and Services (STRS), including funding for the NIST laboratories and the Baldrige National Quality Program; $120.8 million for technology development and industrial outreach under Industrial Technology Services (ITS); and $54.5 million under the Construction of Research Facilities (CRF), which includes construction at NIST's Boulder, CO laboratories and the final lab-by-lab design of, the installation/extension of mechanical and electrical services for, and the relocation into the Advanced Measurement Laboratory.

Total R&D at the Department of Interior would decline nearly 5% to $628 million but the US Geological Survey (USGS) R&D drops 7% to $542 million. Affected programs would be in Water Resources, which provide data and information to state and federal regulatory agencies such as EPA.

Most of the 6.2% increase in EPA's R&D budget to $650 million comes from the nearly $78 million allocated for research in homeland security that includes chemical and biological incidents.

Next Steps

The next steps in the budget process are for Congress to review the President's budget, develop its own budget, and approve spending and revenue bills. Congress will pass a budget resolution, which is the framework in which it will make decisions about spending and taxes. Ideally, the budget for 13 separate appropriations bills will be finalized before the start of the 2003 fiscal year, which begins October 1, 2002. In reality, that usually doesn't happen given the scores of committee and subcommittee hearings that take place, negotiations with the White House, and other events that delay the final budget. A Continuing Resolution is usually passed to provide funding to avoid a government shutdown in the interim until the appropriation bills are enacted into law.

Hiring Needs

So what does the new budget mean for scientists and federal employment? Well, the greatest opportunities are to be found in health-related jobs and in nanotechnology to improve our competitiveness in science and technology. Health-related opportunities generally require an academic background in chemistry or a health or pertinent science (e.g. biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, virology, etc.) allied to health or health-related research, depending on the position description. Nanotechnology crosses many fields and will require the talents of biochemists, bioengineers, chemists, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, materials scientists and engineers, molecular biotechnologists, physicists, and physiologists and biophysicists.

Many of the new opportunities arising from the budget increases would support related employment in academia and at government-sponsored laboratories, through research grants. Additional opportunities would be generated in the private sector, as government contractors win contracts to conduct specific R&D projects. There will also be a number of new opportunities working directly for the government in agencies and laboratories. According to Government Executive magazine, the federal government is expected to increase its non-defense workforce overall by 8%, or 85,000 workers, over the next two years, as a result of September 11th.

The cloud in the silver lining is the federal hiring process, which can be slow. Like private industry, the federal government allows applicants to apply directly for federal jobs but it can take as long as six months to hire someone in the government. The voluminous SF-171 form that all federal applicants used to have to complete has been replaced by the OF-612. All job applicants are evaluated based on their work experience and education. Those applicants who are rated eligible are then ranked against all applicants; the best-qualified applications are then forwarded to the hiring official who decides which applicants will be interviewed. It is critical that applicants include all the information required in the vacancy announcement; otherwise the personnel specialist will rate them ineligible for the position. There are plans to improve recruitment and hiring practices in the government but movement on this front is slow because both Congress and the President must come to an agreement.

Government pay tends to be less than in the private sector. Could you earn more working for Lucent or Procter & Gamble than the government? Sure. However, government jobs offer good benefits, pensions, decent health benefits, and, best of all, security. Federal jobs are stable and not as susceptible to economic swings as private sector jobs are so you can always count on a paycheck. Given the new emphasis on homeland security and countering terrorism, the opportunity to do important work that has an impact can outweigh the salary differential.

Where can you find these jobs? If you're interested in searching for jobs across all agencies, you can visit Fedworld's search page or go right to the Office of Personnel Management's service, USAJobs. If you're interested in working for a particular agency, many agencies maintain their own job Web sites so you can target a specific agency that interests you.

The federal government is the nation's largest employer and is projected grow even larger under the proposed budget. The unknown in the equation is whether this budget will actually be passed as is and chances are, Congress will insist on changes before the budget is finalized. Stay tuned.

Corinne Marasco is JobSpectrum's Content Manager.

Related Resources

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has issued a preliminary analysis of R&D in the proposed FY03 budget.

US News & World Report's Career Guide 2002 issue (February 18, 2002) features a cover story on Uncle Sam as the employer of choice for many.

The Washington Post's Federal Page keeps tabs on issues affecting the federal workforce and news for federal workers.