ODNI emphasizes agile, talented workers

IC Strategic Human Capital Plan

The next five years will be critical for U.S. intelligence agencies, and a new strategic workforce plan outlines the priorities that will determine how effective they will be in the future.

The plan from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is an annex to the U.S. National Intelligence Strategy. It was prepared in June but released publicly Oct. 18.

Writing in the plan's introduction, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said the 9/11 Commission and Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission have provided powerful critiques of the country’s intelligence operations.

"Those landmark documents have helped make us better prepared and more vigilant than we were on Sept. 11, 2001," Negroponte wrote. "But we cannot rest. We must continue to transform our intelligence capabilities and cultures, and much of that transformation will depend on how wisely and well we develop and deploy our human capital."

To that end, the plan is designed to bring more cohesion and coherence to the way intelligence agencies lead and manage people, he wrote.

The plan is organized around three goals:

• Building an agile, all-source force. That includes project and planning for human resources requirements; determining the optimum mix of civilian, military, contractor and other human resources; and creating an overarching policy and information architecture that enables the various components of the intelligence community to find, train and deploy the right people within and across organizational lines.
• Winning the war for talent. Government must recruit and retain the best candidates by recognizing and rewarding technical expertise, performance excellence, integrity and commitment to service.
• Creating a culture of leadership at all levels. That entails fostering a culture that values service, integrity and mission accountability, and embodying those values in a leadership corps ready to tackle 21st-century challenges.