IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century

员工学习
永久的选取ect Committee on Intelligence
众议院
第一千零四届国会

十二。智能分ers

执行总结本研究的目的是检查现有的七个情报中心，评估其有效性，对这些中心的需求，以及中心是否可以将“概念”改编成未来情报社区组织的工作模型。该研究还将提出有关如何改善中心功能的建议。有七个中心：反恐中心，反情报中心，国家反情报中心，犯罪和麻醉品中心，非扩散中心，武器控制情报人员和安全评估中心。所有中心都位于弗吉尼亚州兰利的中央情报机构总部建筑物中。这些中心被建立为“社区”组织。实际上，它们具有独特的“中央情报局”身份。他们主要由中央情报局员工组成，并依靠中央情报局的行政支持和资金 - 经常与其他中央情报局的资源竞争。这一事实使中心很难被接受为“社区”实体。首先，中心必须克服官僚主义的障碍，并需要一段时间的时间才能成熟，并确立自己的情报界的正式参与者。中心的大部分成功归因于中央情报局在中心选择服务的质量领导。 In this study, we considered where the Centers should be located in the Intelligence Community. Also examined were the factors that have made the Centers successful, and the problems that continue to trouble them -- geographic barriers, bureaucratic inertia and personnel management impediments. We concluded that, in most respects, the Centers have become successful, established organizations that should continue to exist. In fact, in many respects, they are now indispensable, representing the type of functional outlook and horizontal integration of analysis and collection that will be critical in addressing the complex transnational issues of the future. Our study recommendations include improvement on community management issues, the need for periodic functional review, and a number of suggested changes to the personnel system. INTELLIGENCE CENTERS Why Were Centers Created? The Centers were established to serve as focal points for significant and enduring intelligence issues. They function as vehicles to pull together the disparate intelligence resources on major issues in order to provide more synergistic collection, analytical and management approaches toward a critical intelligence problem. They also allow the Intelligence Community to show its responsiveness on major issues to the Administration and to Congress. The Centers work because they have established valuable, even essential roles in the Intelligence Community. Specifically, the Centers were created to meet certain perceived needs, and over the years they have made themselves viable entities -- although not necessarily as true "Community" centers with full Community staff representation, as initially envisioned. What the Centers have done is meet the objectives that had been set forth for them and become valued Agency and Community resources. Moreover, they are organizations upon which policymakers have come to rely. The Centers -- What Are They Now? Today, the Centers continue to address specific issues identified by their names. They draw, with varying degrees of success, from personnel throughout the Intelligence Community. Indeed, the very name "Center" implies a certain degree of Community orientation, or that the center is a "shared Community resource." In reality, though, most of the Centers have a distinct "Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)" identity, are predominantly staffed by CIA employees and depend on the CIA for their administrative support and operating expenses. In a sense, the very name "center," is also misleading. The Centers are not true cross-agency organizations, and they are not always the single focal point for work on an intelligence issue. In the case of the Nonproliferation Center (NPC), for example, three National Intelligence Officers (NIOs) also speak on various aspects of nonproliferation. Moreover, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Community Nonproliferation Committee, although chaired by the NPC Director, is a separate coordinating entity. Of all the subject matters upon which Centers have been formed, proliferation is probably the most diverse across the Community. It can range from Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) research and development (R&D;) to analysis on export regimens. In this area, probably more than all others, it is beneficial to have a Center that can provide a centralized planning and coordinating function for the Intelligence Community and between intelligence and policy. It is interesting that the role of the DCI's Nonproliferation Committee is set forth in a DCI Directive. By contrast, there are no DCI or other directives that institutionally identify the corporate intelligence authorities and responsibilities of the NPC. In fact, although it should be a DCI entity, given its function, the NPC is contained within the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence (DI). Each Center has unique features and, therefore, it is difficult to generalize regarding their roles and missions. It is possible, though, to group the seven centers into two generic categories. The Center for Security Evaluation (CSE), the Arms Control Intelligence Staff (ACIS), the National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC) and the NPC most closely approach what might be called Community coordination mechanisms. The Counterterrorist, Counterintelligence, and Crime and Narcotics Centers (CTC, CIC and CNC, respectively) are more the Community's operators. They contain fused DI/Directorate of Operations (DO) line elements that directly support certain intelligence activities. The Centers were intended to be shared Intelligence Community resources with substantial representation of staff from elsewhere in the Intelligence Community. This has not occurred. What the Centers have become, though, are central repositories of information related to their assigned subject matter. Other agencies, to varying degrees, have come to rely on the Centers' data. How the Centers differ from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), another repository of all source analysis, varies from Center to Center. In some, the difference lies in the sheer number of staff who work with the intelligence issues. For instance, the NPC can do more than the NIC in looking beyond the immediate uses of intelligence to assess trends as well as policymaker, analytical and collection needs. Yet, actual analytical work on proliferation issues is performed outside the Center. Other Centers such as the CIC, CNC and CTC are central repositories and producers of analytic product and at the same time are closely involved with operational activities. Another way to describe a Center such as the CTC is that it is like a DI/DO partnership into which a Community partnership is inserted as well. The CTC has close-working analytical and operational components, but considers itself the "one stop shopping spot" for intelligence support to planning and execution of U.S. counterterrorism policy in all its forms. Where Should the Centers Be? As the former CIA Executive Director, Leo Hazlewood, describes it, the worst thing about the Centers is that they are CIA centers and the best thing about them is that they are CIA Centers. For years, the chief complaint from within the Intelligence Community was that the Centers are "CIA" centers. By this, the critics meant that because the Centers were located in the CIA, it followed that their focus would be weighted too heavily toward CIA interests. As a result, according to the critics, other Community needs would get short shrift. There were also concerns over turf, with some Community program managers feeling threatened by what may be perceived as an infringement upon their responsibilities. Of course, similar complaints regarding turf have been voiced from within the CIA. It is not surprising that these complaints were especially intense during the Centers' formative years. The complaints and critics have not entirely disappeared. Nonetheless, we have found that despite their CIA location and large CIA staffs, the Centers, in varying ways, have made great efforts to incorporate and accommodate the information, needs and interests of the entire Intelligence Community and, by and large, they have succeeded. -- There have been problems. Some of the more conspicuous deficiencies relate to the Counterintelligence Center's information sharing practices with the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community. The creation of the National Counterintelligence Center, with its substantial FBI and community representation, as well as the assignment of an FBI Agent to a senior position in the DCI Counterintelligence Center, has greatly improved the flow of information between the FBI and the CIA. When Leo Hazelwood says that the best thing about the Centers is that they are CIA centers, he means that of the entire Intelligence Community, the CIA has been the one intelligence agency willing to make the resource investment in these "Community" Centers. The Centers were initiated by the CIA and have been staffed primarily by its personnel. With the exception of ACIS, CSE and NACIC, the Centers are located in the Operations or Intelligence Directorates. The CSE and NACIC are located in the Community Management Staff (CMS). From those organizations, the Centers derive administrative support. It is argued that this support can be factored into their budgets at a significantly lower cost than if they required separate infrastructures, either outside the Directorates, or even outside of the Central Intelligence Agency. Administrative support may be more expensive if provided by the DCI budget; if the Centers were entirely outside the CIA and other intelligence agencies, their infrastructure costs would be higher still as they would be unable to borrow or ride on any common services or networks. Moreover, according to the CIA Comptroller, it is easier to protect the Centers against unallocated cuts and/or personnel reductions if they are located budgetarily within a larger directorate, such as the DI, where there is a large pot of money, some of which can be shifted to protect priority projects. In the current budget structure, outside the cushion afforded by a larger program, they would feel the full brunt of unallocated budget reductions. Both the present and former Comptroller felt strongly that taking the Centers out of the Directorates, therefore, would be a mistake. Any "independence" from organizational "taxes" on Center budgets or constraints imposed by directorate viewpoints would be of small benefit compared to increased vulnerability and the added operational expenses that independence would mean. It is interesting that of the Center Directors interviewed in this study, those who felt comfortable in their relations with the directorates and saw no benefit in relocating their Centers outside the larger organization were Directors of Centers within the Operations Directorate. Other Center Directors were troubled by the number of times they had to give up resources to the interests of the Intelligence Directorate in which they resided and felt their Centers should be made independent, or had succeeded in becoming independent of that Directorate so that they would not continue to lose funding and personnel to other programs. One Center had managed to get itself moved outside of the Intelligence Directorate for just this reason. Looking Forward Taking these arguments for budgetary protection into account, discomfiture remains about the vulnerability of the Centers to the interests and funding objectives of the directorates in which they reside. The protection against unallocated cuts is a persuasive argument, but it assumes reductions will continue, and that the Centers cannot be protected in any other manner. In addition, those Centers that reside within the CIA's Intelligence or Operations Directorates will continue to draw criticism for being CIA entities. Finally, we believe that the Center concept presents the right direction for future management on major issues, but only if their structure presents the right sense of corporateness. The study, therefore, concludes that the best solution is to relocate as many Centers as possible out of CIA directorates to where they can be perceived as having the most "Community" flavor. It is possible, however, that this may not mean out of the CIA as envisioned in IC21. (See the Intelligence Community Management staff study.) What Makes Centers Work? For Centers to become fully functioning in today's Intelligence Community, they need time to establish their place in the intelligence bureaucracy, they need the leadership and commitment to make them work, and they must readily adapt their structure and activities to remain relevant. Centers Need Time to Mature It takes time for a Center to become effective. Forming a Center to address a Community issue in a centralized way does not mean once the Center is "stood up" that the Center mission is fully functional. Consistently, those interviewed in this study felt that Centers needed time to mature as organizations and to establish themselves as viable institutions within the intelligence bureaucracy. Some have suggested that this process takes a minimum of five years. Even those tasked with getting the newer Centers running, and who thoughtfully sought to apply lessons learned from the struggles of older Centers, discovered that, despite their best efforts, they seemed bound to a five-year "principle." DCI Directives can establish a Center in name, and will outline the Center's mission and responsibilities. Only time and effort can make a Center, functionally, a Community Center. If one also takes into account the administrative expense of setting up new offices and transferring the personnel to staff it, one understands that establishing a Center is not a short-term solution. Centers Need Good Leadership It seems a given that the successful director of a new Center must become involved in struggles over bureaucratic turf. Establishing new relationships requires sheer force of personality and excellent personal relations skills. In addition, the directors must be able to support their employees both within and without the Center. All Center employees are detailees. Centers are faced with a common perception that career advancement can be slowed by assignment to a Center. Overcoming that perception so that good quality staff will be attracted to the Center is important to any Center's overall success. Thus, all of the directors have found it necessary to go the extra mile to support employees in the personnel review process. In the future, reforms to the personnel appraisal process may relieve some of the burden on the directors by providing a clear process by which employees can be evaluated for "out of directorate or agency" contributions. These reforms will be discussed in greater detail at a later point in this study. Centers Must Be Flexible Due to their own initiative or, as a result of change imposed from outside, the Centers have had to respond quickly to change or, if need be, to reinvent themselves. Centers, like all organizations, run the risk of becoming stagnant or behind the times. The Centers must change their organizational structures and activities in a timely way to be able to demonstrate their continued importance, a factor that is of great importance to Centers, as they are the natural competitors with line organizations. Although interviews with Center personnel revealed a commitment to keeping their organizations flexible and able to change, in reality, changes requiring additional funding and personnel may be impeded by the needs and interests of the larger organization in which some of the Centers are presently located. There have been a number of occasions when the Centers in the Intelligence Directorate have had to give up funding for other Directorate needs. On the other hand, Directorates have given up personnel and funding to augment Centers with missions the Directorate felt were of utmost importance. This has been most noticeable in the Operations Directorate. Taking these histories into account, the study concludes that flexibility in Center programs might be best achieved if the Centers were placed in a separate Community account that would subject them to fewer competing interests. Flexibility might also be enhanced by a "seed monies" account. Over the past few years, "seed money" provided to the Centers has helped the Centers initiate certain technological developments throughout the intelligence community. Looking Forward The need for time to become established, the need for good leadership, and the ability to change are essentials that are required now for Centers and will be in the future as well. Again, looking into the future, there are some factors that may diminish Community resistance to the Center concept. Resistance to Centers appears primarily in the form of bureaucratic turf battles or, on a more personal level, negative perceptions about the impact of out-of-directorate (or agency) detailing upon one's career. The future should bring improvement to these problems as, over time, the number of people who have served in the Centers grows. Interestingly, although downsizing has an adverse impact on the ability of Centers to obtain personnel from other agencies, it has a positive effect on the Center efforts. Computer automation developments such as joint data bases, congressional pressure to reduce duplication, and relaxed compartmentation standards have provided the impetus to work more joint activities, with a resulting increase in intra-agency assignments. Downsizing has also pushed short-staffed agencies toward greater cooperation and teamwork. Another factor operating in the Centers favor is that, as time goes by, there will be an ever growing number of people who have served in the Centers and have returned to their respective agencies with a more "corporate outlook." These factors, and the resultant impact on the milieu in which the Centers find themselves, will not change in the foreseeable future. No matter how well-led and flexible a Center organization might be, like any organization it is in danger of becoming self- perpetuating. As part of their coordination effort, Centers frequently establish new working relationships where none existed before. This is one of the great benefits the Centers offer the Intelligence Community. However, once these processes become established, it may be appropriate for the Center to disengage and permit the activity to continue without Center involvement. In order to encourage disengagement when it has become appropriate, and, as an overall review of roles and missions, we recommend that a five-year review process be required of each Center to assess all ongoing Center activities and to rule on the need for its continuation. Barriers and Impediments to Making Centers Work There are three kinds of barriers to making Centers work. The first barrier consists of the problems inherent in establishing a Center's role in the Intelligence Community and the attendant turf issues. These problems have already been discussed. The second barrier is a physical one relating to the far-flung locations of the intelligence agencies. This geographic reality can be an impediment to detailing employees among the agencies. It is a lot to ask a National Security Agency (NSA) employee who likely lives in central Maryland or Baltimore to commute to Langley, Virginia for two years. The geographic barrier and the turf barriers are issues that must be resolved by leadership and management. It might be useful to consider a reimbursement policy for detailees who must travel distances significantly different from what they normally would encounter. The third barrier is a large set of institutional and bureaucratic rules governing employee movement, evaluations, and security. It is in the realm of personnel management that the Centers face some of their most nettlesome problems. It is in this area that this study will make the majority of its recommendations. Like the geographic barriers, some of these obstacles can be mitigated by creative and committed management that provides strong direction and incentives. Others can and must be changed not only to improve the efficacy of the Centers, but to facilitate cross-agency working relationships in the Intelligence Community of the 21st Century. Getting Good People to the Centers One of the perceptions that has plagued the Centers is that there have been cases where they have been used as places to send underachievers. Early on, the belief was that managers were sloughing poor performers and problem employees off on the Centers. Busy with turf battles and establishing their own roles and missions, Center directors at first did not give their attention to the quality of personnel. However, the directors and the Agency itself have given more attention to this problem in recent years, and there have been improvements. Several years ago, as part of an overall review of the Counterintelligence Center, the CIA Inspector General examined the promotion rates and performance of the Center staff. The IG found the Center was filled disproportionately with poor performers. They also found that the Operations Directorate had been the primary culprit in giving poor performers to the Center, not the Intelligence Directorate. An Inspector General study of the Counterterrorism Center done last year compared the promotion rates of those assigned to that Center to those serving in the Directorates. They found the DO had the greatest problem with promoting personnel who had served in the Centers, all other valuative factors being relatively equal. In yet another study, the CIA Executive Director's staff gathered personnel statistics on the Centers and found that the Counterintelligence Center stuck out from the other Centers in having a disproportionate number of people who had not advanced in their careers at a normal rate before coming to the Center. Additionally, in 1993, the former DDI, Doug MacEachin, and ADDI, Dave Cohen, did a review of DI personnel detailed outside the Directorate, to include rotations in the Centers. Looking back over a period of years, they found that the percentage of people on rotational assignments outside the Directorate was steadily increasing. Their study also found that 40 percent of the people whom the DI had in rotation fell into the lowest performance percentages. The proportion of poor performers was even higher in the Centers. As a result, the ADDI issued an order that no one in the bottom tenth percentile could be sent to a Center unless the career service, the Center director and the individual in question agreed that they should go. Each of the Center directors are aware of the problems of perception and/or fact that working in a Center is not career enhancing. All have taken a more aggressive role in the PAR process and, with the exception of the NPC, all Centers have a vote on the promotion panels. Recently, the CIA Executive Director has decreed that no senior level assignments are possible without an "out of directorate" experience. If Directives such as these count rotations to Centers as an "out of directorate" experience, they may, to some degree, help alleviate concerns about the impact of Center rotations upon promotion rates. Until employees are comfortable that their promotion rates will not suffer when they are out of the sight of their home division, the perception that service in a Center can be detrimental to one's career will not fade away. This perception can only be changed by tangible results. We are encouraged by the current Executive Director's interest in personnel management reform; many of the problems highlighted above are now under review. Such reform, however, needs to be injected into the Intelligence Community as a whole, as "out of directorate" rotations alone will not serve the Centers adequately. From the Centers' perspective, any reform of the personnel evaluation procedures within the CIA must include a process that would provide more efficient and fair evaluation of the contributions made by employees detailed to Center or "Community" positions. That evaluation should be meaningful to the division or directorate to which the employee belongs. The DO has a central personnel system in which the Directorate evaluates its employees across the divisions. In the Intelligence Directorate, on the other hand, each Division is essentially its own personnel stovepipe. The division personnel systems were formed to track the development and contribution of analysts focused on a specific issue area. The focus on contribution to the division coupled with the number of personnel "duchies" in the DI makes it difficult to evaluate employees as directorate, Community or Center resources. As increased numbers of analysts are working details outside their divisions, the DI has responded by creating a rotational groups panel to improve the evaluation process. However, this is a patchwork-type response where a more sweeping change to the evaluations of DI employees may be called for. The study proposes that the DI's personnel system be changed so that it can continue to facilitate the development of junior analysts, but also more effectively evaluate intra- and interagency contributions made at a more senior level. One way this might be done is that employees up through the GS-12 level would be evaluated by their home division. From the GS-13 level onward, personnel would be evaluated by a Directorate-wide panel. Such a panel may be better poised to incorporate into its reviews criteria relevant to the entire Directorate, as well as overall Agency or Intelligence Community interests. The problems Centers face regarding the evaluation of detailees' contributions point to a more sweeping issue -- how analytical personnel of the 21st century should be evaluated. Today's analyst spends a great deal more time on short-term reporting and "corporate" projects than analysts of past years. Yet, the system that evaluates analysts still leans toward a "publish or perish" or "what have you done for the division lately" mentality. The "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" problem can be a career threat for an Agency employee on rotation outside his or her directorate. The problem is even more acute when detailees come from other agencies whose evaluation criteria and procedures may be significantly different. Therefore, it is not surprising that Center directors who are aggressive in seeing that good CIA employees are recognized and rewarded, are less effective with supporting workers who come from outside the Agency. Presently, the NPC and the CTC, two Centers that have taken on military detailees, are struggling, for example, to find a way to make their evaluations of performance coherent and meaningful to DoD military evaluation criteria. Additional Personnel-Related Problems Another suggestion that was brought up frequently during this study was the need to reform the CIA's Personnel Assessment Report (PAR) process. Too often PARs are put together by managers less as an evaluation of an employee than as a package designed to get someone promoted. The Centers presently possess a mixture reimbursable and non- reimbursable billets. In fact, the same is true of many offices or groups throughout the Intelligence Community that have detailees from other agencies. The issue of reimbursable versus nonreimbursable billets must be explored further, for it is possible that a Community-wide policy of reimbursable billets might make loaning personnel to Centers or other agencies less burdensome, particularly for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which must count that detailee against numbers remaining in DIA offices. Although work is being done on developing Community security policies, certain policies are not consistent across agencies. From the Center perspective, many object to the imposition of CIA security regulations that are imposed on Center staff, especially polygraphs. This impedes getting detailees to serve on the Centers. The "Virtual" Center Conventional wisdom is that there is no substitute for people working together, face-to-face. Nonetheless, there remains a sense that the advent of common data bases across agencies, video conferencing capabilities and other forms of electronic communications -- not the least of which the secure telephone and fax -- might make it possible, for example, for counterterrorism offices of different agencies to work as a virtual center from their desks in their respective agencies. Yet, try as we may, it is hard to subtract the human contact equation and come up with a dynamic, workable model. To establish a new organization, develop a new cross-Community cooperative process or focus on quick moving issues like terrorism requires intensive, face-to-face interaction. It is true, however, that Centers can and do establish new working relationships that are facilitated by Community data bases and video conferencing. Once these working relationships are established, the Center itself may no longer be required. Imagery Management and the Centers Several years ago, the NPC assumed the role of the nonproliferation imagery manager for the Intelligence Community. In reviewing its management efforts, the NPC did a comprehensive review of imagery requirements against worldwide weapons of mass destruction targets. As a result of their work to improve management of the imagery deck, the Center found a more than three-fold increase in meeting nonproliferation imagery requirements. The CNC uses imagery to support its counterdrug efforts. In working with DEA, the CNC provides that agency with imagery where needed. As this relationship began, the CNC found that the DEA agents could not understand the imagery process. In response, the CNC established a Counternarcotics Imagery Working Group that would interpret imagery used to assist the DEA. In addition, an agreement was worked out making the CNC the Executive Agent for imagery counternarcotics targets, much in the same fashion as the NPC is the Executive Agent for nonproliferation targets. The CTC staff is concerned about how its efforts in this area will be affected by the formation of the proposed National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). Task Forces One area of consideration in this study was the relationship between Centers and Task Forces. The similarities between the two are striking, although the functions, structures and duration of the two differ. A number of Task Forces have been created to respond to specific regional problems, such as the Balkans, or to focus on certain issues, such as strategic planning or Community management. The Task Forces resemble to Centers in that they bring synergy to a Community that is fragmented. Here again, the Task Forces are a response to an Intelligence Community that is finding a corporate approach to problems both necessary (due to shrinking staffs and funds) and beneficial. Unlike Centers, Task Forces are formed presumably for short-term, ad hoc problems -- although the fact that the Balkans Task Force has been in existence for over three years suggests that "short-term" is not always the norm. Typically, Task Force assignments do not present the same personnel problems such as concerns about the adverse effect on one's career as a result of being detailed for two years to a Center. In general, work on a Task Force is viewed more favorably -- in fact, the attention one can receive for work on a short-term, attention-getting Task Force can be career enhancing. Yet, like Centers, Task Forces may incur administrative and bureaucratic burdens associated with assigning or moving personnel on a temporary basis. Depending on the structure of the Task Force, funding, interagency representation and space needs may also be troublesome. As with Centers, the issue is the "portability" of intelligence resources across the Community and the ability to "surge." We believe that Task Forces, like Centers, serve important functions for the Community. To be effective, however, Task Forces need to be highly focused on specific, short-term issues, and their continuation should be monitored, perhaps on a yearly basis, to ensure that they remain responsive to answering the needs of the specific problem or issue for which they were established. Finally, because of the short timelines that would, in part, drive the formation of a Task Force, additional DCI authorities that allow for shifting resources within the Community must be available, and acceptance by the Community and the government of a Task Force as the DCI's/Community's authoritative body for that crisis must be assured without delay. Centers in the 21st Century Many of the observations and recommendations in the previous paragraphs relate to changes that should be considered, given today's Intelligence Community. The overriding question, however, is how the concept of Centers relates to the type of activities the Intelligence Community will need to conduct in the 21st century. We believe that Centers (and Task Forces) are valuable components of the present Intelligence Community, and that Centers will continue to be worthy organizations on into the 21st century. The "Center" meshes with our overall concept of a more "corporate" Community that capitalizes on a more synergistic approach to collection and analysis, and the interaction of these two activities. As pointed out previously, there are two basic types of Centers. We believe that this distinction will, and should, continue, as each type highlights particular strengths regarding how intelligence is used. As transnational issues become more complex, coordination of operations throughout the Community (and the government) will be a major key to a Center's success. Of note is the ground broken by the NPC in its interaction with the policy process. Although in some cases its activities have been to fill voids in the process, NPC's operations specifically point out the utility of intelligence in aiding the decision making process without specifically directing the outcome (or the policymaker's decision). While the military is finding that intelligence needs to be fully integrated into operations to achieve so-called Dominant Battlefield Awareness, the same type of integration into the policy process will be no less important. Finally, the NPC director's role as an issue manager has also broken ground. Congress directed that NPC develop a report that takes a functional, issue-based look at the overall intelligence budget for the FY96 submission. The House Intelligence Committee found the report to be a useful tool in understanding the Community's efforts on proliferation issues, that we believe it will be a mainstay approach for the future. Although some have qualms about some of NPC's activities, such interaction and overall resource focus may well define the type of analytic and management activities the Community will need to adopt across the board in supporting the 21st century policymaker and intelligence planner. In order to achieve the type of synergist operations and corporate mentality that will be required in the 21st Century, the Intelligence Community will have to significantly adjust its practices regarding personnel, security, resource management and other issues that are seen as specific barriers that are found when observing each agency within the Community. Resolving these problems is especially important for the success of the Centers. Some specific proposals and recommendations regarding these areas can be found in the Intelligence Community Management staff study. Generally, however, we find that Centers should be the corporate answer to major transnational issues, and should be managed as such. In the other IC21 studies, we redefine the role of the CIA as the Intelligence Community's premier all-source analysis and production entity. As such, this seems like the appropriate place for most of the Centers. However, it is clear that Centers should represent the DCI and the Community and, consequently should be directly controlled by the DCI, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence or, perhaps, the Director of Military Intelligence, and not in some CIA substructure. Findings and Recommendations 1. The Centers are successful, established organizations that should continue to exist. The Centers were created to address critical, enduring intelligence issues; these issues will continue to be important to U.S. national security for the foreseeable future. 2. The Centers are in daily contact with the entire Intelligence Community as it relates to their subject matter. Because of their responsibilities, they keep current with all aspects of their topic, relevant policymaker needs and requirements, the contributions of the various Intelligence Community programs with which they work, and problems related to gaps and capabilities. Thus, we find that Center directors are best choice for issues managers, in that they are, for the reasons stated above, best suited to do the "racking and stacking" across the Community of programs and resources. 3. The Centers fall short in being the Community organizations they were intended to be. A critical shortcoming of today's Centers is not the work they do, but their less-than-Community composition. Greater Community representation in the Centers will help diminish the perception that they are "CIA" Centers. Greater Community representation also would improve the lines of communication between the Center and the rest of the Intelligence Community. We believe that greater Community representation on the Centers would help diminish the perception that the Centers are "CIA" centers and result in improved communication, information sharing and cooperation among the agencies. Thus, there should be a commitment, if not a requirement, that the Community's leadership fill all of the Centers' Community billets. Increased Community staff participation in the Centers should be expected in the future. Management 4. We recommend that a mandatory five-year review process be imposed upon the Centers to revalidate the continuing necessity for all of the seven Centers' missions and activities. This review will include strong consideration of the management of high-priority requirements across the Intelligence Community and the Centers' contribution to the plans and activities designed to meet those requirements. 5. There are serious questions to be asked about the Nonproliferation Center that go less to its contributions -- which have been significant -- than to its future form and function. It is unclear what pieces of proliferation management should be the purview of the NPC. Since 1993, Congress has been adding to the powers of the NPC while, at the same time, CIA managers have reduced its authority, personnel and budgets. We believe the issues management responsibilities should be returned to the NPC, but that all other NPC activities should be subject to an immediate validation review. 6. It takes years for a Center to achieve a viable role in the current intelligence bureaucracy. The lesson to be drawn from this is that a Center or a center-like structure may not be the best organizational response to a short-term crisis. The DO, for example, is turning more and more to the task force process to work crises. There are many similarities between task forces and centers. In many cases, both must acquire office space, move employees and establish cooperative working relationships with existing IC offices. If task forces are being established to perform as mini-centers, they may not be the best or only solution to short-term problems. In fact, increased information automation and joint conferencing capabilities may make physical collocation of task forces unnecessary. Centers and center-like task forces (longer in duration) likely will continue to require collocation of personnel. 7. If the Centers were placed in a Community account, that program might also include some special Centers funding, including seed money, that could be used by the Centers to push Community response to special needs or new technologies. There would be increased flexibility in planning, if that Centers special funding were placed into a multi-year account. 8. The Intelligence Community should develop a consistent policy regarding reimbursable or nonreimbursable billets in the Centers. In many cases, reimbursable slots would encourage Community participation in the Centers. An appropriate amount of funds should be designated to fund reimbursable slots. Personnel 9. The geographical distance between the agencies that might be represented in the Centers is a barrier to achieving full cross- community participation in the Centers. The study recommends reimbursement for the extra travel required of Center detailees if that travel exceeds 20 miles daily. 10. Not only do the Centers find it hard to fill Community staff positions, they also face the perception -- and sometimes fact -- that service on Centers is not career enhancing. As detailed by the study, there are reforms to Community personnel management practices that would benefit the Centers. The Centers need assistance in getting qualified and productive detailees from within and without the CIA, and a means to assure that the detailees are fairly evaluated and their promotion rates are not adversely affected by Center service. It is important that the evaluation process be revised to more fairly and accurately evaluate the contributions of the Center detailees and other detailees who serve outside their home office. 11. In attempting to respond to the need for broader based evaluations, the DI has established a rotational assignments panel. It remains that the DI has as many personnel systems as it has divisions. The study recommends that these personnel systems remain in place for the evaluation of employees below the grade 12 level. Above the grade 12 level, these systems should be replaced by a directorate-wide system which applies overall directorate standards and the measures developed by the rotational assignments evaluation process. 12. Personnel performance evaluations should shift their focus from skills to issues. The National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), for example, has gone to this model. They have grouped together technicians, analysts and others together and evaluate employee performance with regard the issue being worked. Where there used to be personnel structures for each skill category, personnel management has been more efficiently consolidated to an issue-focused process. Evaluation and personnel management conducted in this way would make it easier to evaluate the work of Center detailees and the increasing number of other intelligence employees working outside their home offices.