In the past, DOD, USAID, and State were the federal agencies primarily responsible for national security. Over the past decade, however, events such as 9/11 and the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have underscored the need for a broader and more integrated national security effort. One of the first structural changes Congress made to address this need was to integrate 22 separate agencies with domestic national security responsibilities to create DHS. Today, greater emphasis is being placed on identifying whole-of-government approaches to developing national security policies and carrying out operations. Such an approach emphasizes the contributions of agencies not traditionally associated with national security. For example, Commerce plays a role in monitoring exports of technology to make sure that sensitive items with military uses do not fall into the hands of our enemies. In light of the challenges that the U.S. government continues to experience in its efforts to coordinate the actions of the agencies involved—whether it be preventing a terrorist attack or overseeing reconstruction and stabilization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan—there is an ongoing policy debate on how to enhance and sustain interagency collaborative efforts. Among the range of proposals for reform, there is a growing consensus that the government’s professional development efforts could contribute to more effective interagency collaboration, which is seen as key to U.S. national security. Specifically, a number of reports—such as the Project on National Security Reform’s Forging a New Shield and the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, written by experts working in the national security field—recommended establishing a cadre of national security specialists from all relevant departments and agencies, and placing them in a long-term career development program designed to provide them with a better understanding of the processes and cultures of other agencies. Proponents contend that such a program would help the U.S. government prepare personnel with national security responsibilities to plan, execute, and lead national security missions. More recently, in September 2010, Congressmen Ike Skelton and Geoff Davis introduced the Interagency National Security Professional Education, Administration, and Development Systems Act of 2010 which seeks to create a system to educate, train, and develop interagency national security professionals across the government. Agencies have historically defined their own professional development activities for their national security personnel. In 2007, however, the Bush Administration launched the National Security Professional Development (NSPD) initiative to integrate professional development activities for national security personnel as part of a larger effort to enhance interagency collaboration. Executive Order 13434, May 17, 2007, entitled National Security Professional Development, required the heads of all agencies with national security responsibilities to identify or enhance current professional development activities for their national security personnel. In addition, the order established an Executive Steering Committee composed of 15 agency Secretaries or Directors (or their designees) to facilitate implementation of the National Strategy for Professional Development. To coordinate NSPD-related activities among agencies, the Executive Steering Committee established the NSPD Integration Office, which created an online repository of information on available training and other professional development activities for national security professionals. Recently, two studies have been launched to reexamine NSPD and to take a more comprehensive look at the skills, education, training, and professional experiences that interagency national security professionals need at various career stages. While awaiting the results of these studies, the NSPD executive staff is reviewing issues related to the scope and definition of national security professionals and revising the NSPD strategy and implementation plan. Several agencies reported putting implementation of their NSPD-related training and professional development activities on hold pending the results of these reviews, or other direction from the administration. In addition, the online repository of information is no longer available. We identified 225 professional development activities intended to improve participants’ abilities to collaborate across organizational lines. These ranged from 10-month joint professional military education programs and year-long rotations to 30-minute online courses. Because these activities varied so widely across dimensions such as length and learning mode, we grouped them in a way that would allow us to analyze their characteristics and make appropriate comparisons. These five general groups included training courses and programs, training exercises, interagency rotational programs, Joint Professional Military Education (JPME), and leadership development programs. We provide further description of these groups in figure 1. Additionally, six of the eight agencies represented on the Executive Steering Committee established by the executive order—DOD, DHS, Justice, Commerce, State, and DOE—identified training related to the National Security Professional Development (NSPD) initiative. We categorized NSPD separately because, although the developmental activities created under its auspices to date have included mostly online training courses, when fully implemented, NSPD was intended to include a range of activities from training courses to interagency assignments, fellowships, and exchanges. NSPD was intended to play a critical role in informing national security professional development activities, and as such, is included in our review in addition to the five groups listed above. Overall, we found that DOD, State, and DHS provided most of the professional development activities that met our criteria. We found some variation within the different types of activities, mostly related to provider, mode of delivery, or participation levels. DHS, DOD, and State provided the majority of training activities, which primarily consisted of short-term, online, or classroom courses. DOD provided most of the exercise programs and all of the JPME programs. DOD and State provided the majority of interagency rotational programs and all of the leadership development programs that met our criteria. Each of the other agencies we reviewed provided at least one relevant professional development activity. All of the agencies we reviewed reported sending personnel to participate in one or more activities in fiscal year 2009. Among the activities for which agencies provided participation data, we found that short-term, online training tended to have the highest participation levels. Participation levels associated with longer-term activities—such as interagency rotational programs—were much lower. Figure 1 below summarizes these and other findings and provides more detailed descriptions of our six activity groups. This page left blank intentionally. Planned learning for acquiring and retaining skills, knowledge, and attitudes. In our review, most were online courses provided by DHS’s EMI or DOD’s Joint Forces Command, or classroom courses provided by State’s FSI. Scenario-based training that allows for the development, improvement, or display of specific capabilities or skills. In our review, most were DOD joint military exercises. Work assignments at a different agency from the one in which the participant is normally employed, with an explicit professional development purpose. In our review, most involved sending personnel between civilian agencies and the military. ■ Most exercises intended to bring participants together to practice working collaboratively within a range of national security-related scenarios. ■ Fiscal year 2009 participation: 240 ■ Most courses provided a common framework for understanding national security topics or information on how to work with an agency with national security responsibilities. ■ Most rotations provided participants opportunities to learn about organizational culture and build networks among partner national security agencies. Photo: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Photo: State. In or review, the mjority of trining was throgh DHS Emergency Mgement Intitte’s online co on integrted ntionl emergency repone topic (fr left) or throgh Ste Foreign Service Intitte’s classroom co (not pictred). A few other gencie nd orgniztion o provided trining co on pecilized topic. For exmple, DOJ provided coe for lw enforcement offici on condcting pot-ast invetigtion (fr right), nd Ste’s Office of the Coordintor for Recontrction nd Sabiliztion provided coe thdevelop the kill plnner need to condct intergency conflict assssment in the field (center). According to our analysis, DHS, DOD, and State provided the majority of the 101 short-term training courses that met our criteria. Over half of these courses were provided in a classroom setting; most of the other courses were provided as online independent study courses, and several courses either mixed or offered a choice between the two modes. State’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) provided most of the 52 classroom directed-study courses, which typically lasted several days or longer and covered the range of policy issues that State addresses, such as post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization and commercial and trade activity. DHS’s Emergency Management Institute (EMI) and DOD—through its Joint Knowledge Online system—provided the 43 online courses, most of which lasted less than 3 hours. These online courses covered topics ranging from the National Response Framework, which is a framework for how agencies collaborate on national preparedness planning efforts, to the roles and responsibilities of different agencies involved in interagency planning efforts such as Joint Interagency Coordination Groups.16, 17 DOD’s Information Resources Management College at the National Defense University (NDU) provided the six courses that mixed classroom and online learning or offered participants a choice between the two modes. These courses, such as Multiagency Collaboration and Enterprise Strategic Planning, covered organizational management topics in the context of national security and interagency collaboration, and could be taken either in a 10- to 12-week online format or as a 5-day classroom seminar on the NDU campus. Some of the courses targeted participants of certain career levels or with certain areas of responsibility. For example, EMI’s introductory national response framework course targeted executive-level personnel from government and other organizations with responsibilities for emergency response. Other courses, such as FSI’s Foundations of Interagency Reconstruction and Stabilization Operations course, did not target a specific employee level or rank but were open to anyone preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, Iraq, or other conflict-prone countries.