OFFICE OF THE

DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

The US Intelligence Community’s Five Year

An Annex to the 

US NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY

UNCLASSIFIED

UNCLASSIFIED
STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

Department of Energy

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Department of the Army

Department of the Air Force

Central Intelligence Agency

U. S. Coast Guard

Defense Intelligence Agency

Department of Homeland Security

Department of the Treasury

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Department of State

Drug Enforcement Administration

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

National Reconnaissance Office

National Security Agency

United States Marine Corps

Department of the Navy
June 22nd, 2006
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There is no doubt that the success of the US

Intelligence Community in helping preserve the

nation's security depends above all on the dedicated

military and civilian members of our workforce.
There is no doubt that the success of the US Intelligence Community in helping preserve the nation's

security depends above all on the dedicated military and civilian members of our workforce.

IC professionals must not only identify, collect against, and analyze myriad threats to the safety of 

our citizens and to America’s interests and values; they must also anticipate threats that have not yet 

materialized, and many of our colleagues willingly put themselves in harms’ way to do this. They are 

truly on the front lines in the War of Terror, with danger as their constant companion and patriotism their

inspiration and motivation.

In recent years, the Intelligence Community has embraced the powerful critiques of the 9/11 and WMD

Commissions, now framed by statute in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

Those landmark documents have helped make us better prepared and more vigilant than we were on

September 11, 2001. 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.

This Five Year Strategic Human Capital Plan will underpin the IC’s ongoing transformation. It is designed

to bring more Community-wide coherence and cohesion than ever before to the way IC agencies lead and

manage their people. It is designed to promote professional growth. And in keeping with the National

Intelligence Strategy’s call for integration and innovation, it is intended to be bold in helping us realize 

our full potential as a Community. I look forward to working with you to achieve that ambitious goal.

John D. Negroponte

Director of National Intelligence

June 22nd, 2006

Foreword from the 

Director of National Intelligence

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No organization has a mission 

more critical than ours.
Overview: The National Intelligence Strategy and Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 

The Strategic Context: Global Threats, Extant and Emerging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The IC’s Human Capital Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Our Vision: An Integrating National Intelligence “Service” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Realizing the Vision: Our Strategic Human Capital Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Goal 1:

Build an Agile, All-Source Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Objective 1.1 – Plan for Threats and Resource Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Objective 1.2 – Identify Common, Core Competencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Objective 1.3 – Build An Enterprise HR Information Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Objective 1.4 – Integrate Our “Total Force” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Objective 1.5 – Stand Up New Force Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Goal 2:

Win the War for Talent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Objective 2.1 – Maintain Our Competitive Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Objective 2.2 – Increase the Supply of Critical Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Objective 2.3 – Strengthen Our Diversity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Objective 2.4 – Invest in Our People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Objective 2.5 – Ensure Competitive Compensation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Objective 2.6 – Provide Competitive, Customized Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Objective 2.7 – Support Our Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Goal 3:

Create a Culture of Leadership...at All Levels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Objective 3.1 – Foster an Ethos of Service, Integrity, and Accountability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Objective 3.2 – Develop a New Leadership Blueprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Objective 3.3 – Treat Leadership as an Enterprise Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Objective 3.4 – Integrate Leadership Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Objective 3.5 – Foster a Senior National Intelligence “Service” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Conclusions, Caveats, and Next Steps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Appendix: Developing the IC Strategic Human Capital Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Table of Contents

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The National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) recognizes 

the importance of our people.

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Introduction. We live in a complicated and dangerous

world. The 21st century demands that those who serve 

in the agencies of the US Intelligence Community (IC),

both military and civilian, be capable of rapidly collecting and analyzing intelligence in a threat environment

that is becoming exponentially more complex, volatile,

and interconnected. The National Intelligence Strategy

(NIS) recognizes the importance of our people in its

Enterprise Objective 4, which calls upon the IC to

“attract, engage, and unify an innovative and resultsfocused Intelligence Community workforce.” It also

requires a five year human capital (HC) strategy that will:

• Build an agile, “all source” workforce by 

projecting and planning for mission critical

human resource requirements (both quantitative

and qualitative); determining the optimum mix

of military, civilian, contractor, and other human

resources necessary to meet those requirements;

and creating an overarching IC-wide human

resource policy and information architecture that

enables the IC and its components to rapidly

acquire, develop, integrate, and deploy our human

resources within and across organizational lines

to accomplish the mission;

• Win the war for talent, by attracting and retaining

the best and brightest candidates, recognizing

and rewarding technical expertise, performance

excellence, integrity, and commitment to service;

providing enterprise-wide opportunities for 

professional growth and leadership development

that will help realize (and use) the full potential

of our employees; and encouraging initiative,

innovation, resourcefulness, and resilience

among the members of the IC and those who

lead them; and

• Strengthen the Intelligence Community by 

creating a culture of personal, professional, 

technical and managerial leadership at all 

organizational levels; fostering an IC-wide 

ethos that values selfless service, integrity, and

mission accountability; and embodying those

values in a transformational, 21st century 

leadership corps that engenders excellence 

at all levels of the Community.

Service as an Integrating Force. These three broad

goals touch virtually every Enterprise Objective, and

the National Intelligence Strategy’s success turns in 

part on managing these complex inter-dependencies.

However, as critical as these goals, objectives, and

relationships are there is much more to the Strategy’s

human capital vision; indeed, the NIS literally defines

the IC’s transformation in human capital terms, stating

that “a high-performing intelligence workforce that is

results-focused, collaborative, bold, future oriented,

self-evaluating, (and) innovative” is central to the

Community’s ultimate integration...and its ultimate

success (NIS, page 4). This demands a degree of ICwide cohesion that is unprecedented, a binding force 

as powerful as the one that aligns our colleagues in the

uniformed services of our country; this too must be

part of our Plan.

Outline of the Plan. To ensure that the Intelligence

Community is able to acquire and sustain a workforce

(and an institutional culture) that can meet these 

far-reaching requirements, the NIS tasked the IC’s 

Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO), in partnership

with the Chancellor of the National Intelligence

University, to develop a comprehensive, five year IC

Strategic Human Capital Plan. This Plan, covering the

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Overview: 

The National Intelligence Strategy 
military and civilian members of the Intelligence

Community in 16 separate elements of six different cabinet departments, is set forth on the pages that follow.

• Setting the Stage

The Plan begins by providing the Strategic

Context for our efforts, outlining the many and

varied threats to our Nation’s security. This sets

the stage for the goals and objectives that follow,

and it is intended to remind us that everything 

it proposes must enable and support the IC’s

mission. The Plan also outlines a number of

Human Capital Challenges, many of which 

face every Federal agency and others that are

unique to our Community, that we must confront

and address.

• Realizing the Vision

Thereafter, the Plan sets forth an integrating Vision

for the IC’s workforce, along with details regarding the three human capital Goals outlined above,

which are intended to achieve that vision. Each

goal includes a number of aggressive, actionable

program and policy Objectives, designed to ensure

that our vision becomes reality (most already

underway), along with critical Interdependencies

with other NIS initiatives. These sections also set

forth implementation Milestones and notional 

outcome Metrics to gauge our progress. The Plan

concludes with final observations and immediate

Next Steps for execution, as well as an Appendix

that describes the intensive, inclusive planning

process that gave rise to this document.

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If our mission depends on our people, the IC’s

Strategic HC Plan must take the Community’s external

threat environment into account — these are the challenges our workforce must face (sometimes directly!),

and the Community’s HC policies and systems must

enable and sustain it in that vital effort.

Our “business” is the Nation’s security, and

today that security is threatened by a chaotic

multiplicity of adversaries and enemies, real

and potential — from rogue states and

emerging regional powers to non-state actors

and extremist movements. These threats

know no national or regional boundaries or

borders...there is no clearly defined battlefield. They are fueled by a world beset by

competition — over resources, land, information, and ideologies. They are also asymmetric, not just between major economic and

military powers, but between established and

developing nations, cultures, and religions.

Our threat environment is further complicated by the 

fact that our principal adversaries operate in a diffuse 

and networked form; they have learned to hide their

intentions and capabilities in plain sight — among 

the everyday and commonplace, from technology to

transport — to threaten the security of US interests 

and citizens. And the danger they present is further 

compounded by “two-edged” technologies that can 

be transformed from the benign and the beneficial to

weapons of mass destruction. Thus, while there is less

danger of global thermonuclear war, in many respects

the early 21st century is an even more dangerous time

than the 20th century.

• The War on Terror

Terrorism remains the preeminent danger to our

citizens, our homeland, our interests, and our allies.

The Intelligence Community is on the front lines in

the War on Terror, and this will continue to be our

first priority. However, even as we prosecute that

war with all the tools at our disposal, we must be

relentlessly vigilant to other possible threats to our

safety and security.

• Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) 

and Proliferation

The development of dangerous weapons (biological and chemical as well as nuclear) and delivery

systems constitutes the second major threat to the

safety of our Nation. Most nation-states are constrained in the use of WMD by the logic of deterrence and international control regimes, but these

constraints may be of little utility in preventing

the use of mass effect weapons by terrorist groups

or rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran.

• Two-Edged Technologies

Emerging and esoteric technologies, such as

biotechnology and nanotechnology, offer the

potential for great benefit; however, they also may

be modified for destructive purposes. These “twoedged” technologies move freely in our globalized

economy, as do the scientists and engineers who

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The Strategic Context:

Global Threats, Extant and Emerging 

White House photo by Paul Morse
can weaponize them, making it extremely difficult

to track and deter efforts to acquire and employ

their necessary production techniques.

• Globalization and Interdependence

To one degree or another, all nations are affected

by the phenomenon known as globalization. While

it has benefited many, its underside – fierce competition for global energy reserves and emerging

markets, tremendous disparities between rich and

poor nations, criminal networks that create and

feed black markets in drugs and even human

beings, and the rapid transmission of disease – all

breed potential threats to our security.

• Emerging Regional Powers

Globalization has resulted in a shift of world 

economic momentum and energy to greater Asia

– especially China and India. These two Asian

giants comprise fully a third of the world’s population – a huge labor force eager for modern

work, supported by significant scientific and

technological capabilities, and competing with

the rest of the global economy for natural

resources and capital.

• Energy Competition and Security 

Competition for energy has increased the 

geopolitical role of key energy producer states

such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela.

At the same time, the pursuit of secure energy supplies has become a much more significant driver of

foreign policy in countries where energy demand

growth is surging – particularly China and India.

• Fragile Infrastructure

Our infrastructure is vulnerable to both natural

as well as manmade disruption, a condition 

compounded by the inextricable linkages and

dependencies among components of our infrastructure and our very way of life. Witness the

breadth and depth and disruption caused by

Hurricane Katrina, and the ripple effects felt

throughout the United States.

• Pandemics and Epidemics

The realities of the 21st century have forced us 

to expand the definition of bio-threats to include

naturally occurring pandemics, such as the potential emergence of a new and more deadly avian

influenza strains. There are many unknowns about

avian flu, but even the specter of an outbreak

could have significant effects on the international

economy, whole societies, military operations,

critical infrastructure, and diplomatic relations.

While each of these threats represents a major 

intelligence challenge by itself, their potential interplay

has made our mission that much more difficult. Simply

put, we must have a workforce that knows as much as

humanly and technically possible about every one of the

threats described above, sometimes from the “inside” of

those countries, organizations, and networks who would

do us harm. Thus, our Nation cannot afford to have less

than the very best at the tip of its intelligence spear. 

The powerful critiques of the 9/11 Commission and the

WMD Commission, framed by statute in the Intelligence

Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, have

helped make us better prepared and more vigilant than

we were on that terrible day in September 2001. But we

cannot rest. We must transform our intelligence capabilities and cultures...and much of that transformation turns

on our human capital.

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Our strategic context shapes the IC’s mission, and in

turn, the requirements and capabilities that shape our

workforce. It also impacts our ability to meet those

requirements...that is, how effectively we are able to

acquire, develop, deploy, and retain the human capital

we need. We face

formidable challenges in that regard.

We find ourselves in

a war for talent,

often for the most

arcane and esoteric

of skills, sometimes

between ourselves

and/or with our own

contractors. And

even when we win it, we must then confront and close

daunting gaps in the demographics, experience levels,

and “world-views” of the “generations” resident in our

own workforce.

• Hyper-Competition

Our war for talent is being fought in a labor

market that is shrinking, the result of lower US

birth rates, fewer college graduates (especially

with technical degrees and foreign language 

proficiency), and fewer still who are US 

citizens. Add to that our requirement for some 

of the most esoteric skills, including proficiency

in the most difficult languages, scientific 

disciplines, and emerging technologies, as well

as the most stringent suitability and security

clearance requirements anywhere, and it is clear

that the IC will face hyper-competition for the

best and brightest.

• Insufficient Diversity

The US civilian labor force is becoming even

more diverse, and while the IC has made steady

progress over the last several years, we are not

keeping pace...at least according to conventional

measures. Part of

the problem lies

with the benchmarks we use —

US Civilian

Labor Force data

includes many

non-US citizens

who cannot meet

our clearance

requirements.

But even if we find better metrics, the fact is

that greater diversity is a mission imperative for

the IC. We need a workforce that looks like

America, but our challenge (and our definition

of diversity) is much broader: we also need a

workforce that can effectively deal with all of

the diverse peoples, cultures, and subcultures 

of the world. The good news is that the United

States remains a land of immigrants, and 

heritage communities offer a potentially rich

source of candidates for the IC.

• An Imbalanced Workforce

After years of tight budgets and externally 

constrained hiring in the 1990’s, we are now

confronted with disproportionate concentrations

of relatively new recruits (that is, those hired

post-9/11) on one hand, and retirement-eligible

The IC’s Human Capital Challenges

We find ourselves in a war for talent, 

often for the most arcane and esoteric of skills,

sometimes between ourselves and/or 

with our own contractors.
employees on the other. In between, we face

critical shortfalls of experienced mid-career 

professionals — those who would have been in

the succession pipeline, but for under-funding

and hiring ceilings. Instead of a more-or-less

even distribution of professionals across all 

year groups and experience levels, the shape of

our workforce is bimodal, two “humps” with a 

deep and disturbing valley in between. The IC

literally skipped a generation of new hires, with

serious ramifications for our overall capacity

and leadership succession.

• Generation Gaps

While we have been blessed with the funding to

rapidly expand our workforce, especially in such

mission-critical areas as analysis and human

intelligence (HUMINT), the wave of post-9/11

new hires brings a different “world-view” about

work and careers. No less patriotic than their

colleagues, they nevertheless see a different balance between work and family, job and career.

For example, many of the IC’s newest generation are not seeking a 25 to 30 year career with a

single employer; instead, they see a future with

multiple jobs and a variety of employers. We

need to recalibrate our HC policies and practices

to accommodate this. We also need to prepare

their supervisors for a potential “culture clash”

with their newest employees... who have far different styles of work, interaction, dress, leisure,

even language.

• Competition with Contractors

Increasingly, the IC finds itself in competition

with its contractors for our own employees.

Confronted by arbitrary staffing ceilings and

uncertain funding, components are left with no

choice but to use contractors for work that may

be borderline “inherently governmental” – 

only to find that to do that work, those same 

contractors recruit our own employees, already

cleared and trained at government expense, and

then “lease” them back to us at considerably

greater expense.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
The Challenge. The US Intelligence Community’s

Strategic Human Capital Plan is a means to an end —

accomplishing our national security mission, in the

face of the threats to our Nation’s security and the

human capital challenges that exacerbate them. In 

this regard, the Plan includes a number of innovative

and far-reaching HC initiatives, all designed to ensure

that the IC has a workforce that is second to none.

However, its true purpose goes far beyond hiring, training, pay, and benefits...it is intended to do nothing less

than help bring about the IC’s transformation.

• Transformation Through Integration

The National Intelligence Strategy declares 

that its success is dependent upon integrating

our Nation’s intelligence agencies and those 

who serve them, transforming them from a 

constellation of separate but cooperating 

elements into a more unified, cohesive “whole.”

The IC’s professionals, both military and civilian,

must begin to see themselves not just as employees

of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the

National Security Agency (NSA), but also as

part of something larger — an overarching

national intelligence “service,” unified by high

standards and performance, common mission,

and shared core values. A truly integrated IC 

is the only answer to the myriad threats that 

we face, and a focus on our common service

(deliberately enabled and reinforced by HC 

policies and practices) can become a powerful

force in that regard.

• Unity Without Uniformity

That said, a national intelligence “service” 

does not depend on or require a monolithic,

homogeneous institutional culture, or a onesize-fits-all set of personnel rules and procedures

(although some uniformity will undoubtedly be

necessary). Nor must it come at the expense of

the separate traditions and interests of the various

agencies that comprise the IC or their respective

departments — at least those that are consistent

with the aims of the Intelligence Reform Act and

the NIS. We believe there is a way forward that

respects those traditions and interests, and that

strikes the proper balance between individual

independence, agency autonomy, and

Community-wide cohesion and integration.

That way ahead is set forth below, through a unifying

IC Strategic Human Capital Plan that is intended 

to chart a navigable course from today’s present to 

tomorrow’s future: an IC transformed under the umbrella

of a national intelligence “service,” integrated by shared

values and a common ethos, and aligned by supporting

HC policies and systems that balance Community-wide

coherence with the need for agency (and departmental)

flexibility and focus.

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Our Vision:

An Integrating National 

Intelligence “Service”
By its own terms, the success of the National

Intelligence Strategy turns on our people...it requires

nothing less than a unified corps of dedicated 

intelligence professionals that is bold and innovative,

focused on results and on the future, collaborative and

self-evaluating, and led by senior officers who understand and leverage the capabilities of the entire US

intelligence enterprise. While the vast majority of the

IC’s civilian and military members already meet one or

more of these characteristics, we need to ensure all of

our people are provided the opportunity and the means

to reach their full performance potential in this regard.

The Intelligence Community’s Strategic HC Plan,

along with the IC-wide policy and program “architecture” that will enable its execution, establishes three

broad goals designed to achieve this end-state.

• Goal 1: Build an Agile, “All Source” Workforce

If the IC is to be able to anticipate and rapidly

respond to the array of threats and targets

described in the National Intelligence Priorities

Framework (NIPF), we must plan for an “all

source” workforce that is optimized by its mix

of military and civilian employees, contractors,

and international and academic partners seamlessly integrated to achieve maximum agility

and enabled by an enterprise human resource

policy and information architecture that allows

easy movement across organizational lines. To

achieve this goal, we must be able to project our

requirements (both qualitative and quantitative)

with far more precision and rigor, match them

against current capacity, and close any gaps

revealed in the process.

• Goal 2: Win the War for Talent

Our mission requires more than just the right

workforce size and structure. It also requires the

right people. The IC must be an “employer of

choice,” able to attract and retain the very best

and brightest to our ranks, even in the face of

fierce competition for talent and scarce skills.

Our workforce must be dedicated to our mission

and strengthened by its diversity, able and willing to meet and exceed the highest standards of

conduct and performance. And in so doing, they

deserve the best we can offer them in terms of

training, career and professional development,

competitive compensation and benefits, and support for them and their families.

• Goal 3: Create a Culture of Leadership...

at All Levels

As an institution, the IC is a paradox. Comprising

16 separate agencies in six separate cabinet

departments, it must somehow integrate those

diverse organizations, unifying them around

shared mission and values ...a common ethos like

the one that binds together those who wear the

uniforms of our separate military services. Our

Nation’s intelligence agencies must be united by 

a common IC culture, its own ethos of service,

integrity, and accountability. This is a daunting

challenge, and if we are to succeed, we will

require a new kind of leadership, developed,

deployed, and demonstrated at all levels of the IC.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

Realizing the Vision:

Our Strategic 

Human Capital Goals 
The threats that face our Nation are many and

varied...indeed, even at our best we cannot be expected

to predict every challenge to our national security. When

such threats emerge, we must have a workforce with the

capacity in place to deal with them, agile and adept

enough to respond rapidly and effectively...a “Total IC

Force” ready and able to bring all of its human resources

(civilian, military, contractor, even retiree “reserves”)

quickly to bear.

Critical Dependencies: This HC Goal enables the 

following key Mission and Enterprise Objectives:

• Mission Objective 1 – Defeat terrorists at home

and abroad

• Mission Objective 2 – Prevent and counter the

spread of WMD

• Mission Objective 5 – Anticipate issues of

strategic concern for decision-makers 

• Enterprise Objective 1 – Build an integrated

intelligence capability

• Enterprise Objective 2 – Strengthen analytical

capacity

Goal 1:

Build An Agile, 

All-Source Force 

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

90

85

4

7

6

8

0

0

79

71

8

14

13

16

0

0

77

63

9

19

14

18

0

0

68

74

14

10

17

15

1

1

51

44

23

25

23

28

3

3

IC Annual Employee Climate Survey

Talent Index Positive Neutral Negative Do Not Know

This index measures employee perceptions about an

organization’s ability to recruit and retain top talent.

It gauges if employees understand how their work

relates to their agency’s goals and mission priorities,

and if they get a sense of accomplishment from their

work. It also assesses employee satisfaction with

coworkers, supervisors, working conditions, involvement in workplace decisions, training and development opportunities, promotions, pay, and rewards.

The IC results are strong in this critical area: most

employees indicate that IC organizations are doing

what it takes to hire and sustain a workforce with

the talent and skills needed to meet our critical

national security mission.

The people I work with cooperate 

to get the job done. 

My work gives me a feeling of 

personal accomplishment. 

I am given a real opportunity to improve 

my skills in my organization.

The workforce has the job-relevant knowledge and

skills necessary to accomplish organizational goals. 

My work unit is able to recruit people 

with the right skills. 
• Enterprise Objective 3 – Optimize collection

capabilities

• Enterprise Objective 8 – Exploit path-breaking

scientific research

Goal 1: Milestones and Metrics. Program and policy

milestones are described below. Metrics will focus on

key indicators of workforce dynamics and structure

(such as accessions, experience levels and distribution,

inter-agency details, attrition and replacement rates,

etc.) for all segments of the IC workforce – military,

civilian, and contractors. In addition, our workforce

planning system will evaluate current workforce 

capabilities, by major functional/occupational group

and key competency area (for example, foreign language capability) against future requirements, as well

as actual execution against IC/component accession

and training targets.

Objective 1.1

Plan for Threats and

Requirements

Plan for Threats. Capacity begins with planning.

Today, workforce planning is largely a budget exercise,

focused on maintaining and/or adjusting overall 

civilian staffing levels. And given the long lead time 

it takes to hire, train, develop, and deploy our most

critical human assets, we must be better able to project

our human resource requirements literally years in

advance, compare those requirements against current

capabilities, and then take sustained action to close the

gaps that may be revealed, to include sustained

funding for projected accessions, training, career

development, etc. across our Future Years

Defense Program (FYDP).

• Project Strategically, 

Plan Systematically

On the demand side, we need to be better

able to link requested civilian staffing 

levels to changes in missions and threats.

Similarly, on the supply side, we need far more

precise, multi-year projections of attrition (quits,

retirements, etc.) and migration (that is, employee

movement from one IC element to another,

within the IC as a whole, and/or between 

occupations), taking into account differences in

these patterns among major occupational groups.

• Model Supply and Demand

We have already begun to design and develop a

more rigorous, requirements-based workforce

planning system. We have acquired an IC-wide

license for a computer-based workforce planning

tool that offers the degree of sophistication we

require, and we are in the process of reconfiguring that tool to reflect our major program budget

categories and populating its database with ele10

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
ment-level human resource information. The

system is expected to achieve initial operating

capability in time for the FY 2008 budget cycle.

• Plan for Foreign Language Requirements

One of the first applications of this new, requirements-based workforce planning system will be

to develop an IC strategic human capital plan for

foreign languages. Based on an analysis of the

return on investments in foreign language hiring

and training to date, the ODNI concluded that

such return was difficult to gauge, given 

relatively vague requirements and performance

metrics. A preliminary iteration of that plan 

will be developed in time for the FY 2009-2014

program planning cycle, using NSA’s work with

its Language Readiness Index as one of the IC’s

benchmarks. In addition to hiring and training

requirements, this strategic plan must also

address the long-term career development of

personnel with foreign language capability (both

military and civilian); they must have viable

career paths that encourage and reward continuous development of these critical skills if we are

to realize full return on our investment in them.

• Manage Military Manpower

We also need to become more involved in 

defining and addressing our military manpower

requirements. For example, active duty military

members provide a major share of the IC’s 

foreign language capability. Better planning and

utilization of military members with such critical

skills, including comprehensive career management, will improve the return on our investment

in their hiring and training. This will require close

collaboration with the military services. In this

regard, the ODNI and the Department of Defense

(DoD) are developing a “joint” set of military

manpower metrics, to include such things as

accession and fill rates for military intelligence

and language specialties, that we will use to

ensure the capability of this vital component of

the “Total IC Force.”

11

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Objective 1.2

Identify Common, Core

Competencies 

Define Critical Qualities. There also is a qualitative

dimension to workforce planning...not just the gross

numbers that may be required by a particular 

component or function, but also

the competencies and qualities of 

the individual employees behind

those numbers. We need to 

identify and validate those 

competencies for each major

functional community, as a basis

for common qualification, training, and performance standards;

these competency models also

will ensure we can identify 

critical gaps between current and

projected workforce capability,

and guide cross-Community and

component-level strategies to

close them.

• Validate Analytic Competencies

We have already begun this effort. In partnership

with the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, we have completed the 

validation of an IC analytic competency model

that identifies the set of critical knowledges,

skills, and attributes required to conduct effective intelligence analysis, now and in the future.

The model, to be completed and implemented in

FY 2006, includes general analytic competencies

(such as critical thinking); categories of “target”

expertise, based on the topics and countries set

forth in the NIPF; and analytic tradecraft — the

tools and methods used by the intelligence 

disciplines, linked directly to IC quality standards

for analytic products.

• Catalog Analytic Resources

This competency model will be integrated into

the Analytic Resources Catalog (ARC); already

online, the ARC is a comprehensive database that

provides IC leaders with a detailed inventory of

the thousands of intelligence analysts in the IC,

according to their expertise and experience. The

ARC will serve as a powerful workforce planning

tool, providing a baseline

of current analytic capability and capacity, compared

against the requirements

projected by the NIPF. And

by listing individual analysts by name and expertise in its “Yellow Pages”

feature, the ARC will also

enable and encourage

informal information 

and knowledge-sharing 

networks, another top 

DNI priority.

• Manage HC by Function and Profession

The analytic community’s efforts offer a template

for the rest of the IC. Each major functional 

community, in partnership with HC professionals,

should take a similar approach. Comprehensive,

functionally-specific competency models should be

developed in FY 2006 and 2007 and employed to

help us determine required staffing levels, IC-wide

and in each component, with far more precision

(see Objective 1.1), as well as the annual accession,

training, and retention targets necessary to meet and

sustain those levels. In addition, these models will

serve as the basis for function-specific qualification,

training, and performance standards. Note these

models and standards would serve as a common,

IC-wide baseline and would not preclude additional, component-specific competencies, so long as

they meet required methodological rigor.

12

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
• Foreign Language Competencies

As we develop a comprehensive functional

“inventory” of our critical human resources, we

must also ensure that we capture their foreign 

language competencies; an inventory of foreign

language-capable employees must catalog their

proficiency levels (which are the focus of the best

current databases), as well as their experience and

skills sets. This is essential to workforce planning

and utilization. Proficiency levels can be identified by standardized testing to include Oral

Proficiency Interviews. In addition, we need to

record such things as years of professional 

experience in specific languages and dialects;

written and oral translation; transcription, interpretation, and/or interrogation skills; language

analysis (that is, writing reports based on foreign

language material); foreign geographic names;

and open source exploitation.

Objective 1.3

Build an Enterprise HR

Information Architecture

Integrate Systems to Foster HR Information

Sharing. Information is essential to workforce planning. The IC must design, develop, and deploy an integrated, enterprise-wide human resource information

architecture if we are to achieve the degree of precision

and information-sharing necessary to support the

sophisticated, “corporate” workforce planning and 

management system our mission demands.

• Ensure Interoperability

This does not necessarily mean that the IC needs

a single human resource information system,

although the potential cost savings associated

with a single platform makes this an option that

must be considered. At the very least, however,

it means some degree of interoperability

amongst the various IC human resource 

information systems in use today. Such 

interoperability will enable the rapid, crosscomponent movement of personnel as well as

personnel information, and also could pave 

the way for improved operational efficiencies

through shared human resource services and/or

employee self-service.

• Make the Business Case for Integration

At present, there is little or no IC interoperability,

with as many as four different commercial human

resource information systems platforms (and various separate versions of those systems) currently

in use. The business case for greater integration 

of such systems is obvious, and in its FY 2007

pass-back, the Office of Management and Budget

(OMB) recommended that the DNI conduct a

business case analysis, modeled after a similar 

initiative now underway in the regular Federal

Civil Service known as the HR Line of Business.

The DNI’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and

the IC CHCO have already initiated such a study,

with a target of completion by the end of FY 2006.

• Meet Critical Short-Term Information

Technology Requirements

In the interim, in FY 2006, we need to move 

forward aggressively to address a number of 

information technology (IT) requirements that 

are integral to our overall IC human capital plan.

These include implementation of the IC’s recently

acquired workforce planning software (see

Objective 1.1); web-based support for the

Community’s new “joint duty” policy, to include

an online listing of joint duty opportunities and

detailees (see Objective 3.4); a database of applicant resumes, so they can be shared and accessed

by all IC components (see Objective 2.1). In FY

2007, we also will expand the ARC database to

accommodate additional, competency-based

inventories of acquisition professionals, scientists

and engineers, and possibly collection personnel

(Objective 1.2).

13

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Objective 1.4

Integrate Our “Total Force” 

Engage all Elements of the Force. The integration

called for the by the National Intelligence Strategy is

more than organizational. We must also begin to look

at all who contribute to the IC’s mission as a “Total

Force” -- civilian employees, military members, 

contractors, and international and academic partners.

And if we are to realize the full potential of that force,

those various elements and components must be fully

integrated as well, according to a deliberate doctrine

that identifies and leverages their relative strengths.

• Eliminate Restrictive 

Staff Ceilings

Today, there is no such 

doctrine, at least with

respect to the use of 

contractor resources to 

augment critical line and

staff functions. Indeed, 

the decision to use such

resources is often predicated

on arbitrary end-strength

ceilings...restrictions that

may literally preclude the

use of US Government

(USG) civilians or military

personnel, even where that makes the most sense

from a mission and cost standpoint. Thus, the

use of contractors is often tactical and exigent,

driven by factors unrelated to mission.

• Identify Inherently Governmental Functions

In its FY 2007 pass-back, OMB requested that

the DNI conduct a study to determine if contractors may be engaged in IC work that is “inherently governmental” and hence improper. We are

initiating that study, with completion targeted 

for the end of FY 2006. The study’s results will

help us determine the optimum mix of civilian,

military, and contractor personnel, develop a

plan for rebalancing our workforce accordingly,

and identify resource and policy issues that may

enable or constrain us from achieving that 

optimum end state.

• Manage Staff Levels to Budget

We also must have the inherent flexibility to

employ the right levels and mix of civilian, 

military, and contractor personnel to meet mission

requirements. This is impeded by the imposition

of rigid end-strength ceilings to manage our workforce. This year, as part of our legislative agenda,

we will seek relief from such

end-strength limitations, at the

very least to permanently

authorize ODNI to approve

staffing at 102 percent of 

ceiling – a flexibility Congress

has provided on a year-by-year

basis in the past. In FY 2007

and 2008, however, we will

ultimately seek to manage 

our civilian staffing levels

based on overall NIP funding 

exclusively, with no end

strength limitations.

Objective 1.5

Stand Up New Force Elements

Integrate and Expand Mission Capacity. The

National Intelligence Strategy also provides for the

establishment of several new IC organizational 

elements, all designed to integrate various functions

and operations, and as a result, provide the Community

with additional mission capacity. The “stand up” of

these new organizational elements presents considerable HC challenges, especially at a time when other

parts of the IC (for example, the Departments of

14

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Homeland Security and Treasury, the CIA, and DIA)

are also expanding staff capacity.

• Establish the Federal Bureau of Investigation

(FBI)’s National Security Branch (NSB)

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Reform

Act of 2004 directed the FBI, in coordination

with the DNI, to establish a National Security

Branch, and within it an Intelligence Career

Service, to improve the Bureau’s intelligence 

collection and analysis capabilities. The DNI and

the Director of the FBI have established a joint

task force to oversee the establishment of the

NSB, starting in FY 2006 and continuing through

FY 2008. Part of that effort will include the

application of the IC’s analytic competency

model (see Objective 1.2 above), as well as 

the qualification, training, performance, and 

promotion standards derived from that model, 

to the Bureau’s agents and analysts. This will

ensure the Bureau’s analytic corps is as capable

as its mission demands.

• Form the National Clandestine Service (NCS)

In response to WMD Commission, the DNI

established the National Clandestine Service

(NCS) to strengthen the Nation’s HUMINT

capabilities, integrating DoD, FBI, and CIA

operations and personnel under the overall 

leadership of the CIA. The DNI and the Director

of the CIA have established a joint task force to

oversee the establishment of the NCS, starting 

in FY 2006 and continuing through FY 2008.

Part of that effort will include the development

of consolidated workforce staffing requirements

and hiring plans for the IC’s clandestine 

collectors; common qualification, training, 

and tradecraft standards; and compensation and

benefit policies that ensure internal equity among

the various components with NCS assets.

• Stand Up Office of the Director of National

Intelligence Centers and Mission Managers 

The United States’ intelligence capacity also 

will be strengthened by the establishment of 

the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),

the National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC),

the Office of the National Counterintelligence

Executive (ONCIX), as well as “Mission

Managers” for Iran and North Korea. Each of

these elements is designed to serve as an IC-wide

integrator, bringing together all-source collection

and analytic expertise in support of their mission

areas. They too present considerable HC challenges, and not just with respect to achieving their

FY 2006 initial operating capability. Beginning in

FY 2007, they also will have a role in the strategic

management of human capital, with responsibilities for competency modeling, standard setting,

and career pathing that bridge the collection and

analytic communities that support them. NCIX is

an early exemplar in this regard.

15

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

75

67

11

15

15

18

0

0

IC Annual Employee Climate Survey 

Overall Employee Satisfaction

IC employees are even more so. This is a very

strong result for the IC.

This single item provides an overall indication of

how satisfied employees are with their jobs. While

most Federal employees are satisfied with their jobs,

Positive Neutral Negative Do Not Know

Considering everything, how satisfied

are you with your job?
Our mission mandates talent of the highest caliber, 

individuals with some of the most valuable (and valued)

skills in the labor market; individuals who can meet and

exceed the very highest standards of performance and

integrity, competence and conduct...all at government

salaries. This is challenge enough, but it is compounded

by the demands we place on our people, psychological

as well as physical. Our human capital strategy and 

supporting systems must be up to the task.

Critical Dependencies: This HC Goal enables and/or

depends upon the following key Enterprise Objectives:

• Enterprise Objective 1 – 

Build an integrated intelligence capability

• Enterprise Objective 2 – 

Strengthen analytical capacity

• Enterprise Objective 3 –

Optimize collection capabilities

• Enterprise Objective 7 –

Establish clear, uniform security practices

• Enterprise Objective 8 –

Exploit path-breaking scientific research

• Enterprise Objective 10 –

Eliminate redundant support systems

Goal 2: Milestones and Metrics. Program and policy

milestones are described below. Metrics will focus on

key indicators of the IC’s attractiveness as an employer,

(such as applicants per vacancy, offer and acceptance

rates for new hires, new hire quality, short/long-term

attrition and retention rates, etc.), as well as our 

workforce’s overall quality and “health.” We also will 

continually monitor workforce diversity, broadly defined

to include non-traditional races and religious/ ethnic

groups, against various population and workforce 

benchmarks and baselines – including more relevant and

specialized employers and labor markets. In addition, the

annual IC Employee Climate Survey will provide a

comprehensive set of indicators that will help us gauge

the morale of our employees, and by inference, their

motivation and retention proclivity (see Objective 3.1).

Objective 2.1

Maintain Our Competitive Edge

America’s intelligence services continue to attract 

our Nation’s best and brightest, idealistic individuals,

both young and experienced, who want to serve 

their country. We receive resumes from thousands of

high-quality applicants each year and generally have

the luxury of being able to choose the very best of

16

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

Goal 2:

Win the War 

for Talent
them. Despite long waits for security clearances, most

of those we select stay the course. However, we cannot

take any of this for granted...it still takes dozens of fine

applicants to find just a few who can make the cut, and

we still face keen competition, often from our own

contractors, for those with scarce skills and attributes.

Thus, we must use every tool at our disposal if we are

to maintain – and sharpen – our competitive edge.

• Recruit Corporately

We already have begun to integrate the separate

recruiting efforts of the various IC agencies, 

coordinating campus and other recruiting visits 

to avoid competing against one another. Under a

common IC brand and informational materials,

our “joint” recruiting teams, coordinated by the

ODNI and a subcommittee of the IC CHCO

Council, are now able to extend their reach to

more campuses and other recruiting events (such

as the national conferences of various minority

professional associations, etc.), and to offer 

candidates who may have had an interest in a 

single agency information on a much wider 

variety of intelligence career options.

• Exploit Technology

We also have begun to leverage technology to

maintain our edge, with an IC recruiting Web site

(www.intelligence.gov) that provides an effective

overview of Community careers and “hot links” 

to the Web sites of our member agencies. We have

plans to improve our site in FY 2006, adding the

capability to accept electronic resumes that can be

shared with all members of the IC, as well as 

continuing to evolve and improve our “branding”

to establish the Community’s own overarching

institutional identity in the labor market.

• Hire Before Graduation

The IC has a number of tools at its disposal that

give us an edge – at least with respect to other

Federal agencies. Unique scholarship programs

like Stokes and Pat Roberts programs, (as well as

the DNI’s own scholarship authority), and tested

approaches like cooperative education programs

and summer internships, allow us to identify and

acquire college talent even before graduation.These

scholarship and other pre-employment programs

have been realigned within ODNI and centrally

funded to ensure greater coordination with IC

accession targets and corporate recruiting efforts.

We also are following an NSA pilot, modeled after

the military’s Reserve Officer Training Corps

(ROTC) program, that “pre-commissions” and 

prepares outstanding college juniors and seniors for

IC careers...a variation on the ODNI’s own Centers

for Academic Excellence (see Objective 2.2).

• Solve the Clearance Problem

Part of our ability to compete for the best and

brightest turns on the success of Enterprise

Objective 7, regarding security clearances.

Under ODNI leadership, the personnel security

community in the IC must expedite the reengineering of the security clearance investigation

and adjudication process in FY 2006, so that 

our recruits are not forced to wait months before

they can begin to do the work they were hired to

do. The IC also needs uniform security clearance

standards to allow ease of movement between

and among IC components (this is especially

critical to the success of joint IC duty; see

Objective 3.4). There are other creative solutions

worth pursuing. The DNI’s Open Source Center,

in partnership with a number of other stakeholders,

is exploring the feasibility of establishing a

“research park” for new hires in FY 2007, where

they can do unclassified analytic work while

awaiting their security clearances; the scientific

and engineering community also is exploring

similar “half way house” alternatives.

17

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
• Enable Mid-Career Entry

We also need to become more adept at and 

receptive to, recruiting mid-career professionals

from the so-called college “after market.” For

too long, we have assumed that the only way to

meet our civilian HC requirements was to hire at

the entry level and “grow our own” talent over

the course of 30-year careers. However, we

know the career patterns of today’s new hires

will not resemble this traditional model, and we

must devise effective alternatives to this closedsystem paradigm. Some of our IC components,

for example, CIA, the Defense Intelligence

Agency (DIA), and the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency (NGA), already have begun

to exploit the mid-career professional talent

source. To accelerate these efforts, in FY 2007

we intend to take full advantage of OPM’s

Senior Presidential Management Fellows program (designed for lateral entry at mid-level pay

grades), and, if necessary, design our own similar program. A compensation system utilizing

broad pay bands also will allow us to offer more

competitive salaries to mid-career candidates

(see Objective 2.4).

• Expand Our Contingent Force

Finally, we need to expand our “ready reserves”

beyond costly contractors, so we have additional

sources of talent to meet short- and mediumterm surge requirements. The Intelligence

Reform Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 gives

the DNI authority to establish a National

Intelligence Reserve Corps of IC retirees who

can be employed without any annuity penalty,

and we have plans to exercise this authority in

FY 2006 to provide support for the stand-up of

FBI’s National Security Branch. We also need 

to expand NSA’s innovative industry exchange

pilot program and use it, along with existing

Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) authorities, to acquire less-than-permanent talent from

the private sector and academic institutions.

Objective 2.2

Increase the Supply of 

Critical Skills

Employ Supply-Side Strategies. The IC’s mission requires

some of the most difficult-to-find skills...for example, 

fluency in some of the most esoteric and complex foreign

languages, deep expertise in foreign cultures, mastery of

one-of-a-kind technologies. By definition, these skills are in

extremely short supply, and competition for them is keen.

The IC generally fares well in that competition (in part

because of the tools we have), but in many cases, there 

simply is not enough “clearable” talent to meet our needs.

One way of getting an edge in this competition is to develop

human capital pipelines that extend far beyond the IC.

• Leverage Our Centers for Academic 

Excellence (CAE)

The IC already has a number of innovative initiatives

underway. For example, our Centers for Academic

Excellence pilot establishes recruiting and teaching

relationships with colleges and universities that have

degree programs consistent with IC workforce

requirements, as well as large minority populations.

The pilot provides targeted grants to these institutions, funding the development and delivery of specialized courses and curricula (and thereby producing

graduates) intended to meet our hiring needs. The

first of our four pilot schools will graduate its inaugural class of CAE students in FY 2006, and if they

prove to be attractive candidates, we have plans to

institutionalize and expand the program to an additional two to four universities in FY 2007.

18

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

Because of our mission, we also need a workforce that 

is truly global in nature, one that can understand the subtle 

cultural nuances and complexities of ethnic and linguistic

groups and subgroups to deal effectively (and sometimes

clandestinely) with people from around the world.
Because of our mission, we also

need a workforce that is truly

global in perspective, one that can understand

the subtle cultural nuances and complexities of ethnic

and linguistic groups and subgroups to deal effectively

(and sometimes clandestinely) with people from all of

the various countries and cultures of the world. To

underscore his commitment to this imperative, the 

DNI has issued an IC Policy Statement on Diversity,

one of his first, and has retained the Diversity Senior

Advisory Panel for the Intelligence Community 

(composed of senior officials from industry, academia,

the military, and the IC) to advise him on diversity

policies and practices.

attack such shortages is to increase

the supply of viable candidates. That

is the goal of this Presidential initiative. The DNI is one of its four sponsors (along with the Secretaries of State, Defense,

and Education), and we have committed funds to

support such activities as summer language immersion programs at the elementary and secondary

school levels. These programs are intended to

encourage students with an interest and aptitude in

languages of strategic importance to the United

States to acquire and/or maintain a foreign language proficiency. NSA has been designated as

lead IC agency for this initiative, and with the

ODNI, it will develop a concept of operations

for this initiative in FY 2006 for implementation 

in FY 2007.

• Implement the National Security Language

Initiative (NSLI)

As noted, we aggressively recruit individuals with

foreign language proficiency, with every means 

at our disposal; however, in many cases, there 

are just not enough candidates to meet our demand,

especially given high “wash out” rates during the

rigorous security clearance process. One way to

Objective 2.3

Strengthen Our Diversity

Make Diversity a Mission Imperative. We must

ensure we have a workforce that looks like the Nation

we serve; this almost goes without saying, but in the

case of the IC, we must go even further. 

19

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
20

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

• Sustain Progress

The DNI’s FY 2005 Annual Report on IC

Diversity shows we continue to make slow but

steady progress in this important area; female and

minority representation is improving, particularly

in the “pipeline” of new hires and those moving

up the ranks to senior officer positions. To ensure

that we are able to sustain and accelerate progress,

we will develop an IC EEO and Diversity Action

Plan in FY 2006 linked to this Plan, which will

incorporate recommendations made by the

Diversity Senior Advisory Panel for the IC in 

its 2004 report, Diversity: A National Security

Imperative for the Intelligence Community.

• Reach Diverse Candidates and Communities

We also will continue our targeted IC-wide

minority recruiting outreach effort; for example,

in FY 2006 the IC recruiting team made visits to

national conferences sponsored by the Hispanic

Professional Engineers Association, American

Indians Science and Engineering Society, Asian

Diversity, National Careers for the Disabled, and

the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, in

addition to Historically Black Colleges and

Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Association

of Colleges and Universities (HACU) member

institutions. We will pay particular attention to

the first “Class of 2006” graduates from those

minority-serving colleges and universities that

are partnering with our benchmark Centers for

Academic Excellence (see Objective 2.2). In FY

2006, we also have plans to convene a meeting

of various heritage community leaders, such as

the Arab-American League, to discuss how the

IC can reach out to members of these strategically important ethnic groups as a rich potential

source of new recruits.

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

87

83

4

6

8

11

0

1

54

36

18

32

24

29

4

3

43

34

24

36

25

26

8

4

40

29

24

35

29

31

7

4

29

27

31

41

27

26

13

6

IC Annual Employee Climate Survey

Performance Culture Index Positive Neutral Negative Do Not Know

This index measures whether leaders provide their

employees with vision and direction, and whether

employees can see the linkage between their work 

and the mission, goals, and performance of their

agency. It also gauges whether employees believe 

that high performers are recognized, rewarded, and

promoted, as well as whether their agency effectively

deals with poor performance. These results indicate

that while the IC, on average, does a better job of 

creating a positive performance culture than the rest 

of the Federal Government, there is still much room

for improvement. 

I know how my work relates to the 

agency's goals and priorities. 

Creativity and innovation

are rewarded. 

Promotions in my work unit 

are based on merit. 

In my work unit, differences in performance are

recognized in a meaningful way. 

In my work unit, steps are taken to deal with a

poor performer who cannot or will not improve. 
Objective 2.4

Invest in Our People 

Integrate Training, Education, and Career

Development. We must take a far more integrated,

“corporate” approach to the education, training, and

career development of our professionals. To date, that

has been left to individual IC components, with little 

if any integration or coordination among them. And

while component training and development programs

generally have been of high quality, standards, courses,

and curricula have been inconsistent and uneven, 

varying across the IC, and sub-optimizing the return on

our substantial training investment. We must do better.

Our professionals are critical to our mission, and we

must ensure they receive the very best education, 

training and career-long development, defined and 

integrated by strong, IC-wide professional communities

of practice, and delivered by a “corporate” system of

higher learning and education— a true National

Intelligence University system that serves those 

professional communities.

• Build Professional Communities of Practice

One of the most effective ways to achieve this

objective over the long term is to establish 

formal communities of professional practice

across the IC, each responsible for “governing”

their respective professions. These communities

of practice also will serve as a powerful integrating force within the IC, mapping out career

paths for their members that include “joint”

developmental assignments between components

(see Objective 3.4) and fostering informal 

information and knowledge sharing networks

across organizational boundaries. Note these

various initiatives would serve as a common, 

IC-wide baseline within and among these 

professional communities and would not preclude

complementary, component-specific efforts.

— Provide Functional Stewardship

As a first step in FY 2006, those senior 

leaders in the ODNI who oversee the

Community’s major professional 

disciplines — the Deputy and Associate

Directors of National Intelligence for

Analysis, Collection, Management 

(including budget and finance, human

resource management, acquisition, etc.),

Science and Technology, and Information

Systems — should assume some stewardship responsibility for the strategic management of their human capital: the analysts,

collectors, scientists, and support personnel

who accomplish the Community’s mission.

— Nurture Our Professional Corps

Beginning in FY 2006, and working in partnership with the IC’s Chief Human Capital

Officer and the Chancellor of the National

Intelligence University, these functional chiefs

should begin to define the common core

knowledge, skills, and abilities critical to their

respective disciplines; compare the current

capacity of their human resources against

these requirements; champion recruiting and

component-level training efforts to close any

gaps (see Objectives 1.2 and 1.3); and institute

high professional standards governing the

qualification, training, certification, performance, and promotion of their members. 

As noted, these various initiatives provide a

common, IC-wide baseline within and among

these professional communities and would 

not preclude additional complementary, 

component-specific efforts.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
• Build Inter-Disciplinary Bridges

Like their counterparts in the more traditional 

professional communities, the Directors of NCTC,

NCPC, the National Counterintelligence Executive,

and Mission Managers for Iran and North Korea,

also must assume stewardship responsibility for

their human capital requirements. While their role

is much more difficult — their HC capability

comes from a variety of intelligence

disciplines and

does not actually

“belong” to them

— they must still

ensure the that the

IC has individuals

with the requisite

cross-domain competencies to meet

its needs in these

critical, inter-disciplinary areas.

— Define Counterintelligence (CI) and 

Other Cross-Domain Competencies

For example, NCIX has already developed a

CI competency model that will bridge those

developed by the analytic and collection 

communities that supply their human capital.

The Iran and North Korea Mission Managers

have similar plans underway for FY 2006 and

2007, complementing similar efforts in the

analytic community.

— Identify National Counterterrorism 

HC Requirements

As part of the NCTC’s development of the

National Implementation Plan, the National

Security Council (NSC) has proposed a 

far-reaching, Federal government-wide

effort, beginning in FY 2007, to identify

current and projected counterterrorism 

hiring and training requirements — everything from analytic competencies to foreign 

language capabilities. ODNI and OPM will

collaborate in this effort, under the guidance

of the NSC.

• Establish a 

National

Intelligence 

University System

In their efforts to

ensure our professionals meet the

highest standards, 

the IC communities

of practice must be

supported by a

strong training 

and education 

establishment with 

a cross-cutting, IC-wide focus. Recommended

by the WMD Commission, the National

Intelligence University (NIU) is designed to

serve that purpose, integrating and aligning 

the Community’s various training schools and

educational institutions under one common, 

virtual “roof.” The NIU will function as a 

network managed and administered by the

ODNI, and made up of the schools and training

components of the IC. In addition, through 

academic outreach activities and partnerships,

the NIU will extend its reach to other USgovernment training centers, degree-granting

institutions and the broader academic community,

to include universities, think tanks, and other

information centers.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
— Coordinate Courses and Curricula

NIU will leverage the separate strengths of

its member institutions, ensure each meets

the highest standards of pedagogy, coordinate disciplinary and inter-disciplinary training and education at all levels, and promote

career-long learning and development for the

IC’s professional workforce — from entry

and full performance employees, to senior

experts and executives. Specific NIU initiatives will be set forth in greater detail in its

forthcoming Learning and Education Action

Plan, linked to this Plan to be completed in

FY 2006.

— Deliver Professional Education

Systemically

In this regard, the NIU will oversee a 

higher education system that consists of 

(1) component-specific programs designed to

meet local requirements unique to a particular IC element; (2) coordinated programs

delivered by various IC components but

intended to meet common requirements (for

example, as set by a particular professional

or functional community) according to 

common standards; and (3) joint programs

that are expressly designed to promote an

integrated, enterprise-wide perspective

among professionals and leaders across the

Community, as a complement to the IC’s

“joint duty” initiative (see Objective 3.4).

• Establish Common Professional Education

and Training Standards

The NIU will encourage member institutions to

seek formal academic accreditation. Beginning

in FY 2006, and in partnership with the NIU,

each of the IC’s major professional communities

will establish common training course and 

curriculum standards for their professionals.

These standards will be used to “accredit” the

NIU’s various member institutions and ensure

that every course they offer is of the highest caliber. Derived from the competency models being

developed for each of the IC’s major functional

and occupational groups (see Objective 1.2),

training standards will be linked to common

qualification, training, performance, and promotion standards in each of our major professional

disciplines. Draft IC-wide training standards

already have been developed for intelligence

analysts, and once they have been validated

against core analytic competencies, they will 

be used to assess current courses.

• Focus on Foreign Language Training

At present there are several separate language

training institutions that support the IC and 

the military, including the Defense Language

Institute, NSA’s National Cryptologic School,

the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute,

and the CIA’s Intelligence Language Institute.

While each program has some specialized functions that serve the requirements of their parent

agencies, there are also large areas of commonality, and much can be done to share resources

in such areas as course content, curriculum

development, and methodology. The fledgling

Consortium for Intermediate and Advanced

Language Training, launched in 2005 with an

initial focus on Chinese and Arabic language

study, provides a basic construct for resource

sharing, and the NIU will evaluate and expand

this construct in FY 2006 and 2007.

23

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Objective 2.5

Ensure Competitive

Compensation

Focus on Market and Performance. We must 

ensure that the Community has the ability to fairly and 

competitively compensate its employees according to

their “market value” and their relative contribution to the

IC’s mission. This will require major changes to existing

civilian compensation systems in the IC, most of which

are firmly rooted in the Federal government’s General

Schedule (GS). Like the GS system, current IC compensation rules are not responsive to labor market competition, particularly for scarce technical and language skills,

and they place far too much emphasis on longevity for

annual pay adjustments.

• Modernize our Compensation Systems

The PDDNI recently announced that exercising

the various statutory personnel flexibilities shared

by the DNI, the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security and the Directors of the CIA and the

FBI, the Community will attempt to design, develop, and deploy a common IC compensation

“architecture” that links compensation to market

and mission, as well as to the competencies and

contributions of individual employees. And while

it need not require a “one size fits all” approach,

that architecture must ensure market and 

performance equity for like occupations and

responsibilities across the Community.

• Recommend a Common IC 

Compensation Architecture

This common architecture will be developed 

in FY 2006 and will attempt to integrate similar

(but heretofore separate) efforts underway in the

Departments of Homeland Security and Defense

that will impact IC employees. The approach is

intended to balance the unique requirements of 

the IC as a Community...without compromising

the interests of the various agencies and cabinet

departments involved, and to ensure a “level playing field” across the IC, avoid dysfunctional interagency competition, and preclude untenable pay

disparities between and among IC components.

For long-range planning purposes, component-bycomponent implementation will begin sometime

in the FY 2007-2009 timeframe; however, our

implementation timetable will be event-driven, not

calendar-driven, and include a “readiness assessment” of each IC component against criteria to be

developed by the CHCO Council.

• Establish a Program Executive

A joint IC Program Executive Office (PEO)

headed by senior executives from NSA, CIA,

and NGA has been established, and all IC 

components and their respective cabinet 

departments are represented. The Program

Executive Office will (1) analyze any and all

lessons learned from previous IC and other

Federal pay system modernization initiatives,

including those undertaken by the NGA, CIA,

and NSA; (2) identify and consider common

elements of the ongoing DoD, Department of

Homeland Security (DHS), and FBI pay-forperformance efforts, including those associated

with the Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel 

System (DCIPS), as well as government-wide

legislative proposals, as a starting point for an

24

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
IC framework; and (3) ensure employees and

managers are kept fully apprised of the IC’s

deliberations and decisions at every step.

• Develop Options and Recommendations

The first phase of the initiative, to be completed

by the summer of 2006, is designed to integrate

employee input and technical research to produce

a set of options and recommendations for consideration by the Joint Intelligence Community

Council Deputies (D/JICC) and the IC Leadership

Committee. In addition to the substantive content

of a modern IC compensation system or systems,

those recommendations will address the degree of

commonality necessary to ensure internal (that is,

inter-agency) performance and pay equity. The

second and subsequent phases will depend on the

strategic decisions made by these two bodies.

• Assess IC-wide

Performance 

Management

Systems

Our Pay Systems

Modernization initiative

will place far more

emphasis on individual

performance in paysetting, and the effort’s

ultimate success will

depend on how 

effective and credible

our employee evaluation systems are. In this regard, OPM has 

developed a set of criteria that can be used to

assess whether an agency’s performance evaluation

system is sufficient for performance-based pay – in

effect, the criteria indicate an agency’s “readiness”

for pay-for-performance. Beginning in FY 2006,

the IC, under the overall coordination of the Pay

Modernization PEO, will begin evaluating 

component performance appraisal systems against

those criteria, making improvements as necessary.

Objective 2.6

Provide Competitive,

Customized Benefits

Expand Benefit Choices. We must ensure our employees have the widest possible range of choices when it

comes to their fringe benefits — such things as health

and life insurance, long-term care, dental and vision 

coverage, etc. Competitive employee benefits are an

important part of the recruiting and retention equation,

but they may even be more critical in the IC, given the

sometimes extreme demands our mission places on our

employees and their families. In many instances, we 

ask our people to put themselves in harm’s way, under

conditions that stretch (and in some cases exceed) the

limits of many traditional Federal employee health, life,

and other insurance programs, and we must do everything we can to provide our employees with insurance

options that address our

unique circumstances.

• Offer Health 

Benefits Alternatives

Wherever possible, we

will seek to enhance 

and expand the health

benefits options available

to the IC. For example,

working in partnership

with the CIA, we were

able to make its health

benefits plan (the

Association Benefit

Plan) available to civilian employees of DIA,

NSA, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO),

NGA, and the ODNI in November of 2005. First

developed in 1947 (and heretofore available only

to CIA employees), that plan was designed to

specifically address the needs of employees 

posted or deployed overseas. We plan to extend

eligibility to the remainder of the IC during the

next Federal Employee Health Benefits open 

season in November of 2006.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
• Provide Customized Supplemental Coverage

In addition, we will seek to provide customized

supplemental coverage to all IC employees, no

matter which health plan they choose. For 

example, over the years, the CIA has expanded 

its insurance programs to offer an increasingly

comprehensive package of optional, supplemental

coverage for such things as accident, income

replacement, and life insurance (covering acts 

of war and terrorism, as well as deployments to

hostile areas) and long-term care insurance, and

again in partnership with CIA, we will provide 

all IC employees with an opportunity to enroll 

in those supplemental plans in mid-2006 during

a planned “mini” open season – component 

payroll systems permitting. We will also seek

out similar and/or additional supplemental 

insurance coverage options for IC employees

with other qualified underwriters.

Objective 2.7

Support Our Families

Expand Our Social Contract. Our mission puts great stress

on the families of our employees. That stress is especially

severe for the families of those who must be posted or

deployed overseas, in many cases on short notice and/or in

covert status, almost always at some risk. However, that

stress is not limited to the families of those “at the tip of the

spear.” Our mission demands much from all our people, and

we owe it to them to establish policies and practices that help

them achieve the right balance between work and family, and

that provide a safety net of support for their loved ones.

• Identify Best Practices

We are fortunate that forward-looking leaders

(and their spouses) in many IC components long

ago identified this as a priority, and they currently

offer a wide variety of services to the families of

our “troops,” both military and civilian. Working

with the Family Advisory Boards established by

the Directors of CIA, NSA, and NGA, we have

begun to catalog those services as part of a study

currently being conducted by a team from the

Council for Excellence in Government; that study,

to be completed in the summer of 2006, will 

identify those services that may serve as “best

practices” for the entire Community to emulate.

• Implement New IC Initiatives

We already have identified several best practices that

should be exported to the rest of the Community.

For example, CIA and NSA have developed a 

training course for the spouses of deploying officers 

that we have now mandated for FY 2006 implementation throughout the rest of the IC. Additionally, to 

institutionalize our commitment to this objective, 

the IC CHCO Council has established a formal 

subcommittee on Employee and Family Support 

to develop an aggressive policy agenda in this 

area, with the DNI designating a dedicated program 

manager on his Human Capital staff to support it.

26

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Goals 1 and 2 are intended to ensure that the IC has a 

workforce with the talent and commitment to do the

job. However, while they provide a platform for greater

integration, these goals themselves will not transform

the IC. It takes more to forge a confederation of 

sometimes-autonomous

agencies into one 

integrated, unified team.

Such a transformation

turns on building a 

common Community culture. We must identify, articulate, and above all, demonstrate the core values that

bind us all together...and make us different. This will

demand visionary, courageous leadership – not just at

the top, but at all levels of the Community, from the

front line to the front

office, all contributing to

an emerging ethos that 

connects us to a common

and compelling mission.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

Goal 3:

Create a Culture 

of Leadership...at All Levels

We must identify, articulate, and 

above all, demonstrate the core values

that bind us all together...and make 

us different. This will demand 

visionary, courageous leadership – 

not just at the top, but 

at all levels of the Community....

Critical Dependencies: This HC Goal enables or

depends upon the following key Mission and

Enterprise Objectives:

• Mission Objective 1 –

Defeat terrorists at home and abroad

• Mission Objective 5 –

Anticipate issues of strategic concern for 

decision-makers

• Enterprise Objective 1 –

Build an integrated intelligence capability

• Enterprise Objective 2 –

Strengthen analytical capacity

• Enterprise Objective 3 –

Optimize collection capabilities

• Enterprise Objective 8 –

Exploit path-breaking scientific research

• Enterprise Objective 10 –

Eliminate redundant support systems
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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

Goal 3: Milestones and Metrics. Program and policy

milestones are described below. Metrics will focus on

key indicators regarding the strength of the IC’s culture 

and its leaders, derived from the annual IC Employee

Climate Survey, with its various leadership effectiveness indicators, as well as targeted analysis of trends

and issues raised in various complaint and appeal

processes. We also will focus on leadership and 

professional development, monitoring the dynamics of

our joint duty rotation base (nominees/candidates per

vacancy, candidate quality, joint tour length, planned

and actual joint training delivery, post-assignment

placement and promotion rates, etc.), as well as the

dynamics of the leadership development “pipeline,”

including the quantity, quality, and diversity of 

succession pools, for all levels of management.

Objective 3.1

Foster an Ethos of Service,

Integrity, and Accountability

Define a Community Ethos. The most powerful way

to strengthen and unify our Community is to foster a

common ethos amongst all who serve in it. That ethos

embodies the “code” of shared values that guides the

way an individual (and an organization) behaves, and 

it defines an institution’s culture. In our case, those

shared values can inextricably bind us together in our

common service to our Nation, integrating the IC like

no other force. This is not an abstract idea; our core

values have a direct bearing on what we do and how

we do it. However, shared values are as intangible as

they are powerful. Consequently, an attempt to create

and sustain a common institutional culture across the

IC, especially where none really exists today, may be

our most difficult HC objective.

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

IC 2005

FHCS 2004

73

65

9

13

18

21

0

0

63

58

14

19

21

22

3

1

56

49

18

28

25

23

1

0

44

40

24

31

32

29

0

0

42

37

27

35

30

27

1

1

IC Annual Employee Climate Survey

The Leadership Index Positive Neutral Negative Do Not Know

This index measures whether senior leaders are

respected, and whether they motivate employees. It

also gauges employee satisfaction with their supervisors, and with the policies and practices of their senior

leaders, especially with respect to developmental

opportunities and performance management. These

results show a majority of employees view their IC

leaders favorably; IC leaders, on average, are rated 

as more effective than leaders across the Federal

Government. However, many employees across the IC

are looking for even stronger leadership, and leaders

who will help them achieve their full potential.

Overall, how good a job do you feel is being done

by your immediate supervisor/team leader? 

Discussions with my supervisor/team leader 

about my performance are worthwhile. 

I have a high level of respect for my 

organization's senior leaders. 

How satisfied are you with the policies and 

practices of your senior leaders? 

In my organization, leaders generate high levels 

of motivation and commitment in the workforce.
• Articulate Our Core Values

An IC ethos must be embodied in certain 

fundamental principles, enduring values that

define the character of the IC and its workforce,

so deeply held that they are independent of time

and place and circumstance. Without a common

set of shared values to guide our actions, we will

never be a true Community. And as a Community,

we must explicitly articulate those values if we

expect our people to embody them. We offer

three such values; we do not presume they represent the only values, or the most important —

they are only offered as a starting point:

— Selfless Service

Our shared commitment to our national 

security mission must have priority, 

taking precedence over parochial interests, 

organizational as well as personal. We 

have an uncommon mission, and it requires

an uncommon dedication to our Nation and

its citizens.

— Integrity

We must have the courage to seek and speak 

the truth...to our leaders and policymakers, 

our superiors and subordinates, our 

colleagues and co-workers, accepting the 

consequences of doing so, even in the face 

of personal or professional adversity.

— Accountability

We must hold ourselves personally accountable for achieving results, as well as for

adherence to all the laws and rules that 

govern how our most sensitive missions are

to be accomplished. In this regard, we are

ultimately accountable to the American 

people, for protecting them from harm, 

but also for protecting their privacy and 

civil liberties.

• Instill and Reinforce Our Values

We also must “walk the talk” of our values. Starting

now, we must instill these core values in every

member of the IC; if these are to be the binding

glue of an IC culture, we cannot leave this to

chance or to on-the-job osmosis. We must discuss

our values in recruitment and training, and reinforce

them on the job. We also must ensure all of our HC

policies and practices, formal and otherwise, are

aligned with and reinforce these values. Nothing

could be worse than to send our workforce mixed

“do as I say, not as I do” signals in this regard. This

is particularly critical when it comes to performance

management and reward systems.

— Model Professional Integrity

Wherever possible, these values should be validated as critical job competencies. For example,

the analytic community has already identified

integrity as a core requirement of all intelligence

analysts, with dimensions ranging from the due

diligence expected of an analyst in researching a

particular intelligence issue (manifested in part

by the community’s professional tradecraft 

standards), to the conviction that an analyst 

must have when “speaking truth to power.”

— Ensure Personal Accountability

We must make accountability for results an 

integral part of our performance management

and reward systems. As a start, the DNI

recently announced that he will require the

heads of every IC agency to submit an 

individual performance “agreement” for his

review and approval at the beginning of each

fiscal year; the agreements, to be co-signed

by the agency head and the DNI, identify 

the specific program results the agency head

personally promises to achieve by the end of

the year. In FY 2006, every senior executive

in the agency head’s chain of command also

is required to develop a personal performance

agreement with his or her superior.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
• Measure Our Progress

We must also measure whether the IC provides 

the sort of work environment that is consistent

with these core values...and where it does not, 

we must take aggressive steps to improve. In this

regard, we have just completed the first-ever

annual IC Employee Survey to determine our

workforce’s satisfaction with their leaders, their

organizations, their ability to collaborate with

peers across the IC, and the personnel policies 

and practices that affect them on the job. While

only preliminary results were available as of this

writing, they are generally encouraging; however,

there are several areas that will need to be

addressed — by the IC as a whole, and/or by 

individual components. With the inaugural 2005

survey as a baseline, we will repeat this process

each year, so we can gauge how far we have

come, and how far we need to go.

• Establish a Culture of Learning

Finally, our culture must support self-evaluation;

in other words, we must learn from what we have

done – from mistakes as well as accomplishments.

In FY 2006, the NIU officially established an IC

Lessons Learned Center (following a recommendation by the WMD Commission), and it is now

up and running. The Center has established a

Senior Steering Group of ODNI leaders to guide

its efforts, and with their input, it has begun developing IC-wide standards for studying, collecting,

and sharing lessons learned; these standards will

be used to sanction component studies, as well as

to incorporate their results into education and

training. In this regard, the Center has already

sanctioned several important studies currently

being conducted by various IC components (the

results of these studies will be disseminated on

NIU’s Web site), as well as a presentation series

that will feature personal “lesson learned” case

studies by senior IC leaders.

Objective 3.2

Develop a New 

Leadership Blueprint

Require Leadership at All Levels. Leadership is the

key to an integrated Community culture that values

service, integrity, and accountability. Indeed, as noted,

leadership is the key to the IC’s entire human capital

strategic agenda. And this leadership cannot just come

from the top...in a “net-centric” world where rigid

hierarchies and formal chains of command may not

have the necessary agility to deal with the threats we

face, every member of the IC must be prepared to step

up to the leadership challenge when it comes. For our

part, we must prepare our people to do so; this cannot

be left to chance. If our leaders, both present and

future, are to survive and thrive in such a world, we

must devise a new blueprint for them, one that focuses

as much on how they lead, as on what they deliver,

integrating our core values, new and enduring leadership competencies, and an unswerving focus on results.

30

STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
• Ensure Senior Leadership Ownership

This blueprint must be driven from the top, and to

that end, the DNI has announced that this year he

will establish a Leadership Development Executive

Council under the auspices of the PDDNI and 

the IC Leadership Committee. The Council 

comprises senior executives from across the

Community...those who are directly accountable

for our mission, and who clearly have the biggest

stake in ensuring leadership excellence at all levels.

The Council will “own” this Objective, as well 

as Objectives 3.3 and 3.4, guiding the modernization and integration of the Community’s leadership

development system.

• Identify Critical Leadership Qualities

Our core values and our mission must guide 

our leadership blueprint. The IC’s 21st century

leader must be able to achieve mission results as

effectively through amorphous networks as through

formal, hierarchical structures...adeptly navigating

through complex webs of people and information

that have no clearly defined boundaries, discovering, synthesizing, and integrating information to

produce credible, actionable intelligence for policy

makers. In FY 2006, the Leadership Development

Executive Council should determine these strategic

and operational requirements, and ensure that they

are operationalized in our HC systems and policies.

— Validate New Competencies

We must validate those new (and enduring)

leadership competencies essential to our 

evolving mission. We have already begun 

this process. Under the sponsorship of the IC

Leadership Committee, we are validating a 

new leadership competency model for the 

Community, identifying those critical qualities

that characterize how our most effective leaders

lead. To be completed in FY 2006, the end result

will be a set of target leadership competencies

(our leadership “tradecraft”) that are essential to

success in a post- 9/11 world, and the NIU must

ensure that its member institutions retool their

leadership development curricula accordingly.

• Identify and Develop Emerging Leaders

Given the long lead time necessary for 

developing our senior leadership cadre, our 

components must become far more sophisticated

in succession planning — especially in identifying and developing front line professionals with

the potential (and the desire) to lead. In this

regard, in FY 2006 the NIU should ensure that its

member institutions offer “readiness” programs

that provide training and developmental assignments that prepare employees for the challenge of

their first and subsequent leadership assignments.

• Set High Standards for All Who Lead

Once our new leadership competency model is 

validated, we must make it real, by using it to

establish (and enforce) the highest standards for

those who lead in the IC. These standards must

drive the way we select, develop, evaluate, and

compensate leaders. To that end, in FY 2007, NIU

will review the courses and curricula of its various

IC member leadership institutes to ensure that they 

all meet such standards, and the IC CHCO will

develop and implement common, IC-wide 

performance and promotion standards for leaders.

• Ensure Accountability

We already have established the requirement 

that all IC component heads and their subordinate

senior executives and professionals develop an

annual personal performance “agreement” with

demonstrable individual objectives that further the

NIS; each agency head’s agreement is co-signed

by the DNI. Subject to periodic progress reviews

and annual updates, these agreements will serve as

a common means of evaluating and comparing

leaders across the IC, along with those critical

competencies common to all IC leaders.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Objective 3.3

Treat Leadership as an

Enterprise Resource

Connect the Dots. The 9/11 Commission concluded

that the IC failed to “connect the dots” of existing

intelligence in a way that may have warned us about

the impending terrorist attack on the World Trade

Center, and it attributed at least part of that failure 

to the insularity of the separate, largely independent

agencies that 

comprise the IC. 

The bureaucratic

borders between our

components are real

and they sometimes 

operate as barriers to

effective information

and intelligence

sharing.

• Ensure an Enterprise Orientation

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism

Prevention Act of 2004 sought to remedy this

by empowering the DNI to make service on 

his staff, or in more than one IC component, 

a prerequisite for promotion. Patterned after

similar reforms implemented by our armed

forces in the mid-1980’s, we believe “joint 

IC duty” will ensure that our leaders, as well 

as our front line professionals, acquire the

broader, enterprise-wide perspective essential

to success in a net-centric world.

• Establish Joint Duty Requirements

We are well on our way. The DNI has issued IC

Directive 601, which establishes joint duty 

experience as a prerequisite for promotion to

most senior executive positions in the IC, 

identifies those positions in the ODNI and its

various Centers that provide joint experience,

and sets the terms and conditions for joint 

rotational assignments. The directive also

ensures that individuals on joint assignment to

another IC component are fairly considered for

permanent promotions in their “home” agency

through rigorous oversight and enforcement.

• Identify 

Joint Duty 

Positions and 

Opportunities

In addition, 

we have begun

the process 

of identifying 

additional civilian positions

outside of the ODNI that may provide and/or

require joint duty experience, based on criteria

endorsed by the IC Leadership Committee. 

In consultation with the heads of IC components

and their respective departments, the DNI will

publish these positions; we will also establish a

Web site for posting joint duty opportunities,

both rotational and permanent, so employees

will be able to apply and be considered for them.

In addition, we will identify and accredit “joint”

training and development course requirements to

complement rotational assignments; together,

joint duty and joint training will serve as integral

and reinforcing parts of our overall professional

and leadership development pipeline. These

steps will be completed in FY 2006.

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STRATEGIC HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

...“joint duty” will ensure our leaders, 

as well as our front line professionals, acquire

the broader, enterprise-wide perspective 

essential to success in a net-centric world.
Objective 3.4

Integrate Leadership

Development 

Develop Leaders Jointly. We need leaders who see 

the IC as a single enterprise, who are accountable for

results, but who are also as concerned about means 

as ends... however, leaders like this do not happen 

by accident. One of our highest priorities must be an

integrated IC leadership development system that 

produces a senior leadership corps

embodying these qualities. Today,

each IC element develops its own

leaders, and these separate efforts

yield suboptimum results...

especially now, when “joint 

duty” will become a prerequisite

for promotion to virtually all 

senior leadership positions in the

IC (see Objective 3.3).

• Provide an IC Leadership

Development Roadmap

We cannot leave leadership

excellence to chance...it must

be developed systematically

across the IC. By FY 2007,

working with the IC’s components and functional communities, we must establish a clear, “corporate” roadmap of assignments, courses, and

other developmental experiences for those who

will lead us. That template may allow for variations from one component to another (because

of differences in mission, size, structure, etc.);

moreover, most leadership training will still be

provided by individual IC components.

However, the DNI, through the Leadership

Development Executive Council, must ensure

that those separate efforts are integrated and

aligned with our competency model; the courses

and curricula they offer are grounded in an 

IC-specific “enterprise” leadership philosophy

derived from that model; and the courses the

components deliver meet the highest standards

of content and pedagogy.

• Ensure Open Enrollment

As a first step in FY 2006, all of the

Community’s core leadership training courses

must be available to any member of the IC. This

will leverage our existing leadership development

capacity for maximum effect and complement 

the IC’s new “joint duty” requirement, breaking

down inter-agency barriers as leaders from 

all across the Community learn together. And 

to ensure that this happens, we have already 

established a requirement that at least 25 percent

of all spaces in a component’s core leadership

development curriculum be reserved for attendees

from other IC elements. NIU will identify those

core courses, and by FY 2007, include them in a

comprehensive, Web based IC course catalog,

with the on-line registration and recordkeeping

necessary to support this requirement.

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Objective 3.5

Foster a Senior National

Intelligence “Service”

Integrate Our Senior Services. To realize the full

potential of these interrelated efforts over the long

term, the IC’s leaders must be treated as a single senior

executive corps that integrates the separate senior 

services extant in the Community today: the Senior

Executive Service, the Senior Intelligence Service, 

the Senior National Intelligence Service (SNIS), the

Senior Foreign Service, the Defense Intelligence 

Senior Executive Service, the FBI/Drug Enforcement

Administration Senior Executive Service, and their

senior technical counterparts, such as Defense

Intelligence Senior Level employees.

• Grant Dual Commissions

This fragmentation creates artificial barriers that

unnecessarily impede inter-agency mobility (and

the enterprise perspective that comes with it), and

as long as these fissures exist, the integrating

power of “jointness” will never be a reality.

However, integrating our senior services under an

SNIS need not come at the expense of the identity

of its separate elements, some of which reach far

beyond the Community. Rather, we believe it is

not only possible, but also desirable for IC leaders

to hold a “dual commission” in more than one

senior service and in so doing, be able to move

between such services with relative ease. 

• Enable Greater Inter-Agency 

Executive Mobility

In the interim (FY 2006), we must work with the 

IC components, their respective departments, and

OPM to develop a master interchange agreement

that allows individuals in one IC senior service to

be non-competitively appointed to another such

service; we also must look for every opportunity 

to bring the separate senior services together (the

recent DNI policy on a common date for applying

new Executive Schedule salary rates is one such

example), under the leadership of the ODNI’s new

Office of Senior Officer Management.

• Establish a Common Leadership Ethos

The US military offers us a model for our future.

Regardless of service, flag and general officers

are bound by similar personnel policies, and their

orientation has become more and more “purple”

as a result of their joint duty — that shared 

experience engenders a common leadership ethos

that diminishes service differences when it really

matters. Between now and FY 2009, we have the

opportunity to follow a similar path. All of the

elements are being put in place: joint duty as a

requirement for senior rank; a corporate set of

leadership characteristics, embedded in common

evaluation and promotion standards; performance

agreements that will align the efforts of all the

IC’s senior leaders with the NIS; an integrating

IC leadership development system; and a

Council of the Community’s most senior 

executives to oversee the implementation 

and integration of these initiatives.
Service as an Integrating Force. As noted at the 

outset, this Five Year Strategic Human Capital Plan 

is intended to be bold and innovative, but entirely in

keeping with the mandate given us by the President,

Congress, and the American people. And while the

notion of an overarching National Intelligence “Service”

may have seemed a bridge too far at the beginning of

this document, we believe the strategic agenda set forth

herein leads inevitably and inexorably to such an 

end-state...without compromising the interests and

authorities of the separate agencies and their respective

agencies and cabinet departments. Nothing could better

serve the goal of integration, acting as a powerful force

for bringing cohesion to the Community and its various

components and employees. Thus, we stand by our

vision and believe it represents the sum total of the 

goals and objectives set forth herein. 

Caveats and Challenges. As noted, however, the

Intelligence Community comprises 16 separate 

elements, 15 of which reside in six separate cabinet

departments. Moreover, each department and IC 

element has historically operated more or less 

independently, especially with respect to their human

resources. Thus, the execution of this Plan faces at

least two unique challenges:

• A “Net-Centric” Structure 

First, the DNI is not a department in the

Executive Branch, but rather is an independent

agency created to oversee intelligence activities

that span the various cabinet-level departments

and agencies. The DNI’s authorities provide for

strategic and fiscal control over the other IC elements (as well as some control over leadership

appointments), but these must co-exist with the 

individual departmental and agency authorities

that were not supplanted by the creation of the

DNI. Thus, this plan is uniquely net-centric, 

cutting horizontally across organizational 

boundaries, relying more on the power of

shared mission and values than formal 

authority to integrate the IC, and as such, this

HC strategic plan cannot be compared to other,

more traditional departmental HC plans. 

• Starting From Scratch

Second, when it comes to the strategic 

management of the IC’s human capital, the DNI

is starting from scratch. Its notional predecessor,

the IC Community Management Staff, had 

virtually no staff devoted to this area, and 

while the Director of Central Intelligence 

Conclusions, Caveats, and Next Steps 

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(DCI) issued a directive on human capital 

(DCI Directive 1/12) in December of 2004, 

its focus and impact were prospective. With 

the appointment of an IC Chief Human Capital

Officer, a Chancellor for the newly-created

National Intelligence University, and a Chief 

of Equal Employment Opportunity, along with

their supporting staffs, the DNI has recognized

the importance of human capital to the IC’s

mission...and its transformation. 

Next Steps: Alignment of Component Strategic 

HC Plans. If that transformation is to be realized, the

community requires more than this Plan. To achieve its

ends, the DNI needs the commitment of every one of

the IC’s components and departments, their senior

leaders and managers, and our employees and military

members. This Plan is intended to be action-oriented,

to demonstrate that we mean what we say, but given

the unique relationship between the DNI and the 

elements of the IC, the heads of the IC components

must follow suit. Accordingly, as a final objective 

for FY 2006, each component should develop (or as

applicable, revise) its own strategic human capital 

plan to align with and enable this far-reaching agenda. 

. . . to achieve our goals, 

we need the commitment of every one 

of the IC’s components and departments,

their senior leaders and managers, and 

our employees and 

military members.
In response to the mandate of the National Intelligence

Strategy, the IC’s Chief Human Capital Officers

Council, comprising the CHCOs and equivalents

from all of the IC’s components and their respective

departments, devised

a multi-phased

process to develop

and deliver the 

first-ever IC Strategic

Human Capital Plan

to the Director of

National Intelligence

(DNI). As outlined

below, that strategic

planning process was intensive and inclusive, engaging

numerous stakeholders to ensure that the final result

had the “buy in” necessary for successful execution.

• Conceptual Approach

Beginning in the summer of 2005, the IC CHCO

established a small, multi-agency strategic 

planning cell made up of some of the most 

forward-thinking members of the IC’s human

capital community. Meeting weekly through 

the early fall of 2005 even as the NIS was being

formulated, this cell sketched out a conceptual

design for an inaugural IC-wide strategic human

capital plan, as well as a phased (and broadly

inclusive) process to take that concept to reality.

• Strategic Planning Off-Site

Central to that process was a strategic planning

off-site for the IC CHCO Council. More than 

25 Council members and staff met for two days

in November

2005 to develop

the consensus 

HC vision and

goals set forth

below, as well 

as a number of 

specific program

and policy 

initiatives. The

Principal Deputy DNI (PDDNI) attended and

provided an overarching strategic context for 

the session.

• Special IC CHCO Council Session

The results of the off-site were consolidated 

and summarized in a detailed briefing that 

was presented to a special session of the entire

IC CHCO Council (including departmental 

representatives) in December 2005. The 

Hon. David M. Walker, Comptroller General 

of the US and a champion of HC strategic 

planning, participated in the session, providing

valuable feedback to the IC members on 

our approach.

Appendix:

Developing the IC 

Strategic Human Capital Plan 

The IC CHCO established a small, multi-agency

strategic planning cell made up of some of 

the most forward-thinking members of the 

IC’s human capital community.

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• CHCO Council Drafting Teams

Based on feedback from this plenary session, 

the Council divided itself into four small drafting

teams (one for each of the four original strategic

HC goals outlined in the briefing), each 

comprising a senior Office of the Director of

National Intelligence (ODNI) staff member and

one or more component and/or departmental

CHCOs and staff. In January 2006, these drafting

teams met and prepared draft text for the Plan, 

as well as proposed metrics. Their input was

consolidated by the IC CHCO staff and presented

to the Council in its February 2006 meeting for

final revisions.

• External Review

The Plan was reviewed by an external panel 

of independent experts convened by the 

ODNI’s Office of Strategic Planning. It was

also reviewed and assessed by the Office of

Personnel Management (OPM) against the

human capital standards and requirements of 

the President’s Management Agenda (PMA).

OPM is responsible for overseeing the Human

Capital part of the PMA scorecard in relation to

the standards identified in its Human Capital

Assessment and Accountability Framework.

OPM also evaluates Federal agencies on the 

efficacy of their strategic human capital plans.

Feedback from both of these reviews has been

incorporated in this final version.

• Final Coordination 

The Plan was shared in draft with the CHCO

Council for comment in March 2006. In addition, a two-page summary of the Plan, along with

a list of all of its objectives, was also provided to

the IC components for official comment. The

Plan has also been briefed to other ODNI NIS

plan “owners” to ensure appropriate connectivity

as well as to senior component representatives.

Once published, the Plan will be briefed to the

IC Leadership Committee, the Joint IC Council

Deputies, and other key IC stakeholders, 

including Members of Congress and staff, 

and IC employees and managers.

Annual Evaluations, Status Reports, and Updates.

This inaugural IC Five Year Strategic Human Capital

Plan is intended to be a “living” document, regularly

updated and revised to reflect changing IC and DNI 

priorities and requirements. At the end of each Fiscal

Year (FY), beginning in FY 2006, the Council will 

provide an annual report on progress against the Plan’s

goals and objectives, as well as the various program

milestones and metrics previously described, with 

any interim revisions to the Plan provided at that time.

Every three years, coincident with the planning cycle 

for the National Intelligence Strategy, the Council will

undertake a more comprehensive review of the Plan.
STRATEGIC 

HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN

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