2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

obtain the necessary clearances necessary to be able to work in the IC the community must do
everything possibly to ensure applicants understand the work they are undertaking. In a
technical sense media portrayals are a very poor “Realistic Job Preview” for any applicant
considering working in the IC. Further they tend to focus on a fairly narrow range of jobs that
can also hinder recruiting.
Additionally, different agencies have very different degrees of public awareness about
their contribution to “intelligence” work. While agencies like CIA and NSA have very high
public visibility, organizations like ONI or the Department of Energy (DOE) have a much lower
profile. The www.intelligence.gov site puts a frame of reference around the IC, identifies all the
components and their role in the overall IC. The front page of our web site is shown below in
Figure 1.
Figure 1. Home page of www.intelligence.gov
The development of an unclassified web site describing work in the IC presented several
unique technical challenges. The primary challenge was identifying a common metric for
describing jobs within the IC. The next major challenge was the security classification level.
Obviously, some of the jobs are classified. In addition, an unclassified job in one agency can
(and often is) classified in another agency. Therefore, extreme care was taken in making agency
attributions about certain jobs or occupations. The next major challenge was to get agency “buy-
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45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003