Intelligence execs urged to gain experience with multiple agencies
Experience with multiple intelligence agencies is likely to become a prerequisite for advancement to executive positions within the intelligence community, the human capital chief for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Wednesday.
Within the next several years, movement across some of the 15 agencies in the intelligence community probably will become a requirement for employees looking to become senior executives, said Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer at the intelligence office. He spoke at a National Press Club breakfast hosted by Government Executive.
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte released a National Intelligence Strategy last week in which he addressed upcoming human capital reforms. The paper called for building "an intelligence community-wide culture that values the abilities of each of its members and provides them developmental opportunities across the intelligence community in accord with their aptitudes."
The strategy also called for Sanders to develop an Intelligence Community Strategic Human Capital Plan. Sanders said his first order of business is the cross-agency employment plan.
"Our very first human capital directive," Sanders said, is the notion that "if you want to be a senior leader in the intelligence community, you have got to pull joint-duty."
The 15 agencies in the intelligence community are the: Air Force, Army, Navy, Central Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Marine Corps and the departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, and Justice.
Sanders said that in the future, employees will "have to continue moving diagonally or laterally across the intelligence community," commenting that employees with this diversity of experience "are better leaders for it."
Within the 15 intelligence agencies, there are more than 1,000 positions that are considered senior level. These are in services such as the Senior Executive Service, Senior Intelligence Service, the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service and the Senior Foreign Service.
The cross-agency initiative will focus more on mid-level or lower intelligence employees, Sanders said, because it is "too late when you're a senior leader already." But within five years or so, he said he hopes that vacant SES positions will be filled by people with cross-agency experience. Sanders said he expects certain jobs to explicitly require such experience.
"We have to give people who are in the pipeline enough time to recast their career plans," Sanders said. The intelligence director's office will "try to balance the need for speed with the concern that we don't demoralize" upper-level employees, he said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in response to the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act, which sought to unify and coordinate the components of the intelligence community to better guard against terrorist attacks.
COMMENTS
- I attended the breakfast yesterday and I'm in complete agreement with Mr. Sanders that Senior Executives must have wide ranging experience and broad scope knowledge and skills to be successful. I believe the SES was designed to be the cadre of senior professional managers in the federal government. However, in my experience it is the very rare SES manager that leaves the home agency to gain that wide experience. I really applaud Mr. Sanders for forcing this issue in the intelligence community. The entire SES cadre would benefit from details and reassignments across the entire federal government. I also applaud Government Executive for putting on these programs. Keep up the good work. mike stein Posted November 3, 2005 8:02 AM
- Gee, having cross-dept and agency experience (after genuinely competing as a non-internal and non-insider applicant for same) is now considered not only a positive for mid and upper level career growth, but even a prerequisite?? If that is the case, then Mr. Sanders and others will need to challege and change the highly insular "we take care of our own" organizational culture that is present in far too many federal and is deeply ingrained into essentially all of DoD's organizations. These organizations have a long and protracted and troublsome (but telling)legacy hiring record in the general administrative series in the mid and upper level GS grades whereby nearly 100% of those that are hired are/were either currnet or prior staff (e.g., DoD GS, recently retired DoD military members or DoD contractors) of the very same DoD agency that is purportedly searching for the "best and the brightest." Yes, indeed, Mr. Sanders' well founded words and desires, if there is any hope of success, will need to be augmented by many years of challenging the deeply ingrained "we take care of our own" insular status quo! Michael Smith Posted November 2, 2005 5:53 PM
