by Heather L. Fallon

In early May, Government Executive hosted an executive leadership breakfast examining the latest human capital trends in the United States Intelligence Community. The breakfast, hosted by Shane Harris, National Journal’s Intelligence and Homeland Security Correspondent, featured a panel of experts in the field, including Ronald Marks, Senior Vice President for Government Relations at Oxford Analytica; Dr. William Nolte, Research Professor and Director of the Center for Intelligence and Education, University of Maryland; Timothy Sample, President of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance; and Dr. Ronald Sanders, Chief Human Capital Officer of the Intelligence Community.

Dr. Sanders and the other panelists explained that the crisis is indeed severe: the intelligence community lacks seasoned personnel who can move into the upper management ranks once the Baby Boomers retire. As Mr. Harris explained, the intelligence community workforce is shaped like two humps on a graph. In this depiction, one hump represents the inexperienced recent hires (Generation Y workers, frequently referred to as “Millenials”), who make up approximately 35% of the intelligence community’s workforce. The other hump represents the long-term employees out of the Baby Boomer generation. The dip in the middle is the problem area – it represents the dearth of seasoned middle managers, which was caused by workforce reductions shortly after the end of the Cold War. As all the panelists agreed, one major consequence of this gap is that many of the midlevel positions have been filled by contractors, whose higher pay scale provides an incentive for personnel to leave the intelligence community after 5-6 years of training and experience.

The crisis is further complicated by a number of factors: a change in enemies and threats, which requires expertise in different cultures and languages); the lengthy security clearance process, both slows the processing time for new recruits and hampers the ability of first- and second-generation Americans (who have the requisite language capabilities and cultural knowledge) to enter into the intelligence community; cross-agency collaboration; and a generation gap between the expectations and values of the Millenials and of the older generations.

Dr. Sanders discussed several strategies that his office is implementing in order to address the problems and gaps in the intelligence community’s workforce. He and his staff are working to reduce the time it takes to process a security clearance, as well as ease the security clearance hurdles for first- and second-generation Americans. They have also beginning to require all upper-level managers to serve in joint-duty assignments within other agencies, in order to improve information-sharing, and broaden experiences, as well as satisfy the Millenials’ desire to move around and try new things. Another recent innovation in the intelligence community is “Intellipedia,” which is a portal for sharing classified information across agencies. Intellipedia entries can be updated by, and give credit to, anyone with access to the most recent information, so the system is an excellent means of recognizing an employee’s work.

All of these reforms are part of an effort to improve employee retention rates, but the bottom line for many employees is that a move to a private sector government contractor would increase their salary by about 25%. To this end, the intelligence community, like most of the rest of the Federal government, is starting to move away from the General Schedule and towards a system of pay-for-performance. The hope is that by implementing reforms that will keep younger employees engaged, fewer will be lost to contractors (and the overall reliance on contractors will be diminished), and the intelligence community will avoid another human capital crisis.

The Performance Institute, located in Arlington, VA., is a private, non-partisan think tank seeking to improve government performance through the principles of competition, accountability performance, and transparency. PI serves as the nation’s leading authority and repository on performance based management practices for government. The mission of the Institute is to identify, study, and disseminate the leading management innovations pioneered by “best in class” organizations.