[Senate Hearing 108-760]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-760
THE 9/11 COMMISSION HUMAN CAPITAL
RECOMMENDATIONS: A CRITICAL
ELEMENT OF REFORM
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 14, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Amy B. Newhouse, Chief Clerk
------
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
Andrew Richardson, Staff Director
Marianne Clifford Upton, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Kevin R. Doran, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Voinovich............................................ 1
Senator Coleman.............................................. 4
Senator Pryor................................................ 15
Senator Collins.............................................. 19
Prepared statements:
Senator Akaka................................................ 4
Senator Durbin............................................... 5
WITNESSES
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Jamie S. Gorelick, Esq., Commissioner, National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States....................... 7
Fred Fielding, Commissioner, National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States................................. 10
Mark Steven Bullock, Assistant Director, Administrative Services
Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation...................... 21
John Turnicky, Special Assistant to the DCI for Security, Central
Intelligence Agency............................................ 23
J. Christopher Mihm, Managing Director of Strategic Issues, U.S.
Government Accountability Office............................... 25
Paul C. Light, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution... 35
C. Morgan Kinghorn, President, National Academy of Public
Administration................................................. 37
Doug Wagoner, Chairman, ITAA Intelligence/Security Clearances
Task Group..................................................... 39
Max Stier, CEO, Partnership for Public Service................... 41
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Bullock, Mark Steven:
Testimony.................................................... 21
Prepared statement........................................... 58
Fielding, Fred:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Joint prepared statement..................................... 51
Gorelick, Jamie S., Esq.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Joint prepared statement..................................... 51
Kinghorn, C. Morgan:
Testimony.................................................... 35
Prepared statement........................................... 98
Light, Paul C., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 35
Prepared statement........................................... 88
Mihm, J. Christopher:
Testimony.................................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 68
Stier, Max:
Testimony.................................................... 41
Prepared statement........................................... 130
Turnicky, John:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 63
Wagoner, Doug:
Testimony.................................................... 39
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 106
APPENDIX
Responses to questions for the Record from:
Mr. Gorelick................................................. 139
Mr. Fielding................................................. 141
Mr. Bullock.................................................. 143
Mr. Mihm..................................................... 159
Mr. Kinghorn................................................. 164
Mr. Wagoner.................................................. 166
THE 9/11 COMMISSION HUMAN CAPITAL
RECOMMENDATIONS: A CRITICAL
ELEMENT OF REFORM
----------
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government Management, The Federal
Workforce, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee,
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George V.
Voinovich, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich, Collins, Coleman, Pryor, and
Carper.
Senator Voinovich. Good morning. I am confident that this
Subcommittee will rise to the challenge before it to report
legislation which will enhance the security of the United
States of America. I know some say we have spent a very short
time contemplating reforms. I would like to say that our
Chairman has done a beautiful job of vetting this issue and
hearing from everyone. There are more hearings scheduled which
will allow us to move forward in implementing recommendations
of the 9/11 Commission.
I want to congratulate Senator Collins and Senator
Lieberman for the work that they have done.
I am honored that Senator Collins has asked me to Chair the
hearing today. I am hopeful that the proposals we discuss today
eventually will be included in the Committee's legislation.
On March 29, 2001, this Subcommittee held a hearing
entitled ``The National Security Implications of a Human
Capital Crisis.'' The panel of distinguished witnesses that day
included former Defense Secretary James Slessinger, a member of
the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century.
At the end of Secretary Schlesinger's testimony, he said
this, ``As it enters the 21st Century, the United States finds
itself on the brink of an unprecedented crisis of competence in
government. The maintenance of American power and the world
depends on the quality of the U.S. Government's personnel,
civil and military, at all levels. We must take immediate
action in the personnel area to ensure that the United States
can meet future challenges. Fixing the personnel problem is a
precondition for fixing virtually everything else that needs
repair in the institutional edifice of U.S. national security
policy.''
When September 11 occurred, the first thing that came to my
mind is we didn't have the right people with the right
knowledge and skills at the right place at the right time. If
you survey government, you will find where you have problems,
this usually is the reason why we have those problems.
Secretary Schlesinger's insightful comments were reinforced
by the 9/11 Commission. On page 399 of the report, the
Commission recommended significant changes in the organization
of the government. The Commission went on to say: ``We know the
quality of the people is more important than the quality of the
wiring diagrams. Some of the saddest aspects of the 9/11 story
are the outstanding efforts of so many individual officials
straining, often without success, against the boundaries of the
possible. Good people can overcome bad structures. They should
not have to.'' They should not have to.
The 9/11 Commission specifically noted several areas for
Federal personnel reform, including improving the Presidential
appointments process for national security positions and
establishing a single agency to conduct security clearance
background investigations. As we know, there are multiple
agencies that investigate clearances, and it takes too long. I
will never forget hearing from people that had transferred
agencies and said that the new agency would not accept the
security clearance from any other agency. This meant that they
had to start all over again.
A third recommendation from the Commission is to provide
some additional personnel flexibilities to the Federal Bureau
of Investigation to reflect its increased counterterrorism
intelligence responsibilities. This is another thing that we
have been working on for a long time trying to understand if
the FBI has the personnel flexibilities to get the job done.
For a dozen years, they have been asking for more personnel
flexibilities and have never been responded to.
Normally, the Subcommittee would hold individual hearings
on each of these topics; however, the Senate's tight
legislative schedule precludes this. So we are addressing all
three recommendations today.
First, the 9/11 Commission recommends streamlining the
Presidential appointments process. This is a problem that I
have been examining for years. When Senator Fred Thompson left
the Senate, I told him I would continue to push for
appointments reform. I think most of us know that once a
President is elected, everybody throws up their hands and says,
this appointment process is awful. Once individuals are
confirmed, somehow it kind of takes a lower priority and just
kind of fizzles out, and then you have a new President and they
come in and they complain about the appointment process.
It now takes an average of 8 months to confirm an
appointee, up from 2 months during the Kennedy Administration.
We can do better than this. In addition, there are now
approximately five times the number of political appointees as
there were in 1960. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has stated
that he did not have his entire team in place on 9/11, almost 8
months after taking office. This process must be improved.
Second, the 9/11 Commission also recommended establishing a
single agency to provide and maintain security clearances. The
process for investigating, adjudicating, and maintaining
records of security clearances is disjointed and decentralized.
There is no doubt that this system leads to delays in hiring
and transferring employees in sensitive national security
positions, which in turn is damaging to our national security.
We must find a better way of managing security clearances.
Finally, the Commission recommended that the FBI develop a
specialized and integrated security work force consisting of
agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance specialists who
are recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained to ensure the
development of an institutional culture imbued with a deep
expertise, and I quote, ``imbued with a deep expertise, in
intelligence and security.''
There is another area that I have been examining in part
because of my concerns with the FBI personnel system. I
sponsored legislation last fall that required the Office of
Personnel Management to issue a report on ways to eliminate the
classification pay and benefit disparity within the Federal law
enforcement community. As you may or may not know, the
Department of Homeland Security is now trying to harmonize all
of the law enforcement employees in their agencies. My thought
is if you are going to do that in the Department of Homeland
Security, we cannot ignore all of the other law enforcement
entities outside of the Department of Homeland Security.
The FBI is on the front lines of the war on terror.
Counterterrorism should be the most important mission of the
FBI, and it must have the personnel, resources, and flexibility
to get the job done. Congress must do all it can to make this
happen.
Commissioners Gorelick and Fielding will discuss their
findings in greater detail, and the other witnesses will
comment on their recommendations. There is probably widespread
agreement that improvements in these and many other areas
related to personnel can be made, but this discussion in no way
diminishes the excellent work that is being done today by
thousands of employees in the Intelligence Community. In many
instances, they are putting their lives on the line for our
Nation, and we owe them our heart-felt gratitude.
Working with Senator Collins and other Members of this
Subcommittee, I have been drafting proposals to address these
challenges in addition to other legislation designed to enhance
the work force of the Intelligence Community. It is essential
that our Intelligence Community agencies have all the tools
necessary to recruit, hire, retain, and promote individuals
with the right competencies.
I look forward to today's important discussion, and since
we have so many witnesses today, I have decided to follow the
recommendation of the Chairman, to restrict the opening
statements of Senators, but since I only have one other Senator
today, I would be glad to qualify my colleague.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
I will be very brief. We have heard a lot. This is our
eighth hearing, and there is more to hear and we have a number
of witnesses. So I just have two observations.
One, despite all the criticism about how difficult it is to
get things through our Congress, I think we ought to make some
progress here, and it is not that we are acting in haste. These
have been extraordinary hearings over the summer. We have
learned a lot. So I am very confident that we will move
forward. We have talked a lot about structure, but structure in
itself is meaningless without people, and I think we have to
understand the whole human capital aspect of it.
So I am looking forward to today's hearing. I am looking
forward to getting something done, and I am looking forward to
America being a safer place. So thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Coleman. One of the
great things about Senator Coleman is that he was a mayor for
many years, and it seems that people who have had some
administrative experience have a little deeper appreciation on
how important personnel is to one's success.
I would also like to state that Senator Akaka's statement
will be entered into the record, and any of the other Senators
that would like their statements entered into the record, will
be accepted.
[The prepared statements follow:]
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today's hearing to discuss the
human capital issues related to reforming the Intelligence Community.
You and I have worked together over the past 6 years to ensure that the
Federal Government has the right people with the right skills in the
right place at the right time. It is in this light that we hold today's
hearing to discuss the gaps in our human capital resources identified
by the 9/11 Commission: understaffed counterterrorism centers, the long
delay in training employees, and problems in recruiting employees with
the requisite skills.
Unfortunately, the need to address these gaps is not new.
Discussions on how to reform the Intelligence Community personnel
system has been going on for years. Since 1989, various commissions,
studies, think-tanks, and outside experts have called for changes to
the Intelligence Community's personnel management systems.
Recommendations include greater personnel flexibility, stronger
personnel management coordination, an integrated personnel and training
system for the Intelligence Community, common standards for
adjudications, standardized background investigations, improved
performance appraisal and management systems, systematic career
planning and professional development, and promotion of a sense of
community among the agencies. More recently, in 2001, the National
Commission on National Security/21st Century, also known as the Hart-
Rudman Commission, called for personnel reforms including rotational
assignments for national security personnel and programs to recruit
skilled individuals by paying educational costs in exchange for
government service.
While some of these recommendations have been adopted, the 9/11
Commission report asks for further action. It is clear that first and
foremost, the management of human capital in the Intelligence Community
must be improved. The Comptroller General recommends there be a Chief
Operating Officer under the National Intelligence Director (NID) to
handle daily agency management. Depending on where the NID is placed in
the executive branch, I recommend we consider this proposal to ensure
that effective human capital management, the key to any successful
organization, is a high priority. Such an individual could also have
responsibility over issues related to information security and
financial management.
Moreover, I believe that a Chief Human Capital Officers Council,
similar to that created in 2002 which focuses almost exclusively on
policies pertaining to competitive service Federal employees covered
under title 5, United States Code, should be created for the
Intelligence Community. Based on recommendations made by the National
Academy for Public Administration in the 1989 report, ``The
Intelligence Workforce for the 1990s: A Review of Personnel and
Compensation Systems to Meet Current and Future Missions,'' such an
organization would be responsible for identifying, developing, and
sharing best practices in recruitment and retention efforts and
coordinating legislative requests for personnel flexibilities.
Mr. Chairman, as you know, there is already legislation pending
before Congress to improve the recruitment and retention of Federal
workers with critical skills. In both the 107th and 108th Congress, I,
along with several of my colleagues on the Committee, introduced the
Homeland Security Federal Workforce Act. Although the Senate passed the
most recent version of our legislation, S. 589, last November, the
House has not taken action on the measure. S. 589 would permit the
payment of an employee's educational costs in areas of critical
national security importance--such as foreign language, science,
mathematics, and technology--in exchange for government service. This
approach, along with advanced planning and skills assessments by
Federal agencies, would allow a National Intelligence Director to hire
employees with skills tailored to meet agencies' national security
needs. Although the FBI and the CIA have both testified before this
Committee that they are receiving a record number of employment
applicants, one of our priorities is to ensure that there is a large
and highly qualified applicant pool from which to select employees
possessing critical language, technical, and scientific skills,
especially those possessing a combination of these skills.
It is also critical that national security professionals have a
breadth of experience in the interagency process and strong knowledge
of substantive policy issues. Both elements are crucial to ensuring
crosscutting policy formulation and analysis. To address this need, S.
589 creates incentivized rotational programs within the Intelligence
Community aimed at breaking down cultural and artificial barriers to
information sharing, building a cadre of highly knowledgeable
professionals, and ensuring cooperation among national security
agencies.
Lastly, the majority of the Intelligence Community currently
operates under a non-statutory internal appeals system for performance
and conduct cases. Although I would not change this internal appeals
system, as a strong supporter of employee rights and protections, I
believe that there are certain elements that every appeals system
should contain: notice, an opportunity to respond, employee
representation, and a decision by an independent adjudicator. Any
entity that oversees the Intelligence Community must ensure that these
reasonable elements are included in an employee appeals system.
Furthermore, as a leader on strengthening Federal whistleblower
laws, I am concerned by the myriad of laws governing employees in the
Intelligence Community: The Intelligence Whistleblower Protection Act,
the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Military Whistleblower Protection
Act, the FBI Whistleblower Protection Act, and the authority given to
Inspectors General to investigate and report allegations of retaliation
for whistleblowing. In light of the heightened need to encourage
Federal employees to come forward with information vital to preserving
our national security and protecting those who make such disclosures,
there must be strong oversight and emphasis on investigating
disclosures and protecting those making disclosures. As such, I
recommend that there be a designated officer in the Office of the
Inspector General of the National Intelligence Directorate to handle
whistleblower reprisal complaints. Similar to the Civilian Reprisal
Investigations Office in the Department of Defense, this office would
serve as the key contact point for whistleblowers. The office would
have whistleblower affairs officers who would conduct investigations,
coordinate personnel management remedies, and provide outreach to
Federal and non-Federal agencies involved with whistleblower affairs.
Mr. Chairman, each of my recommendations would improve human
capital management within the Intelligence Community, in turn, which
would strengthen our national security. Again, I thank you for holding
today's hearing, and I thank our witnesses for sharing their views with
us.
__________
PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Thank you, Chairman Voinovich, for holding this very important
hearing on the 9/11 Commission's recommendations regarding their
suggested changes in the Intelligence Community's personnel structure.
You have been a stalwart leader on human capital issues for many years,
and I thank you for giving us the opportunity to hear from these
excellent witnesses today.
This hearing focuses on three main recommendations of the 9/11
Commission, namely improving the Presidential appointments process for
national security officials, establishing one agency to conduct
security clearance background checks, and providing additional
personnel flexibilities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that
will reflect its increased responsibilities in the areas of
counterterrorism and other intelligence gathering.
Presidential nominations.
I agree that we need to ensure that Presidential nominees for
members of the administration's security team are approved by the
Senate in a timely fashion, but I do have some reservations about how
to go about this without diminishing the important role of the Senate
in the confirmation process. I am concerned about putting an arbitrary
time limit, in this case 30 days, on the Senate to hold an up or down
vote on a nominee. This takes away power from the committee
chairpersons and the minority party in the Senate to subject
nominations to appropriate scrutiny.
Also, I am concerned about why this group of nominees--as opposed
to judicial nominees or some other subset of administration nominees--
should receive preferential treatment.
It is useful to consider the August 30 CRS analysis of the actions
of the Clinton and Bush administrations on the topic of Senate
confirmation of the president's security team. That report showed that
confirmation of this group of nominees was rarely delayed more than 30
days. The report shows that only 14 of the 49 nominees that would have
fallen under this category were delayed longer than 30 days.
Security clearance.
The committee is drafting a proposal that would encompass the 9/11
Commission's recommendation to centralize responsibility for security
clearances in one agency, and I applaud those efforts. However, I think
the problems that have arisen in recent months as the Department of
Defense and the Office of Personnel Management have tried to coordinate
their efforts needs to be carefully considered since the DOD handles
about 80 percent of the background checks needed in this country. Talks
between these two entitles broke down in May over OPM's concern about
taking on too much financial risk.
There are about 188,000 people waiting for clearance, according to
DOD's files, and it takes about 375 days for a security clearance to
make it through the background check and adjudication process,
according to a recent investigation by the House Government Reform
Committee. This is far too long and deserves further exploration as to
the reasons.
FBI personnel reforms.
While the FBI has already begun to overhaul itself in an effort to
create a smarter, more flexible workforce, more could be done in terms
of coordination among existing staff. The 9/11 commission report found,
among many other things, that FBI analysts were often untrained and
therefore were not used to great capacity by the agency's agents. It
would be interesting to learn more about how the bureau will be
improving opportunities for agents and analysts to work together.
Other legislative proposals.
I understand the committee may be contemplating legislative reform
regarding improving and encouraging intelligence personnel to continue
their education by enabling Intelligence Community personnel to receive
non-taxable student loan repayments from the agency that employs them.
I would hope serious consideration could also be given to
legislation I have proposed that would authorize partnerships between
local school districts and foreign language departments to provide
intensive development for K through 12 foreign language teachers and
incentives for students to major in math, science, or foreign
languages. It is well-documented that the United States Government
needs to bring personnel with a high proficiency in less commonly
taught languages, such as Arabic, Farsi, and Thai. The Homeland
Security Education Act would go a long way toward preparing our
intelligence workforce for the linguistic challenges ahead.
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses.
Senator Voinovich. I now would like to hear from our
witnesses, and we will start with Ms. Gorelick.
TESTIMONY OF JAMIE S. GORELICK, ESQ.,\1\ COMMISSIONER, NATIONAL
COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES
Ms. Gorelick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having us here
today, and thank you, Senator Coleman for joining us as well. I
agree with the Chairman's observation. You ran a very well-run
city. We worked together at the time.
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\1\ The joint prepared statement of Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Fielding
appears in the Appendix on page 00.
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Mr. Chairman, we are honored to appear before you today. We
want to thank you and we want to thank the leadership of the
Senate for the prompt consideration of our recommendations, and
we want to thank you for the support that you have shown to our
Commission.
The Commission's findings and recommendations were strongly
endorsed by all ten Commissioners, five Republicans and five
Democrats. We share a unity of purpose, and we have called upon
Congress and the administration to display the same bipartisan
spirit as we collectively seek to make our country and all
Americans safer.
I would like to first address the issue of personnel reform
and the FBI, and then my colleague, Fred Fielding, will address
the remainder of the topics before us today.
The FBI has been a major force and a major focus for
intelligence reform since the 9/11 attacks. Building on the
work of a Congressional Joint Inquiry, the Commission found
that the FBI fell far short of the mark in adequately carrying
out its domestic counterterrorism mission. It was the lead
agency in investigating foreign terrorist groups but it did not
have the capability to link the collective knowledge of
thousands of agents in the field to national priorities. As a
result, crucial information did not find its way up the chain
of command to those who could act upon it.
One of the startling examples of this was that the Acting
Director of the FBI did not learn about the Bureau's hunt for
two possible al Qaeda operatives in the United States or the
Bureau's arrest of an Islamic extremist trying to learn to fly
until after September 11, and that was too late.
We believe that institutional change to improve the FBI's
intelligence capabilities and to focus on the Bureau's
counterterrorism mission is of utmost importance to the
country's national security. We have not recommended the
creation of a new domestic intelligence agency, a MI5 type of
structure, because we believe that creating a domestic
intelligence collection agency is too risky for civil
liberties, it would take too long, it would cost too much
money, and it would sever the highly useful link between the
criminal and counterterrorism work of the FBI and the work that
the FBI does with State and local law enforcement.
We considered other structural changes, but we decided that
the broader changes would not be necessary if our other
recommendations were adopted. As you know, as part of our
recommendations, we proposed a National Counterterrorism
Center. We recommend a strong center overseeing all of the
foreign and domestic counterterrorism work, bringing it all
together in one place, and we also recommend creating a
National Intelligence Director who can set and enforce
standards for collection, processing, and reporting of
information; but I would note that if you did not have a strong
National Counterterrorism Center or a strong Intelligence
Director, we might well have come out with a different set of
recommendations with regard to the FBI.
We are encouraged by the direction in which Director
Mueller has taken the FBI, and that he has created some new
structures within the Bureau to keep its role focused. He has
made progress, but he has a long way to go. He has established
the Office of Intelligence overseen as the top tier of FBI
management. He has created field intelligence groups in all the
field offices to make sure that the FBI priorities and the
emphasis on intelligence are put into practice. Improvements in
information technology systems, connectivity, and information-
sharing with the rest of the Intelligence Community are
planned, but progress has been slow.
These kinds of structural and technological changes, as
you, Mr. Chairman, point out, only take you so far. Without the
development of an institutional culture within the Bureau that
appreciates that counterterrorism mission and grows strong
intelligence officers to support it, all of the structural
improvements that we suggest will only be half measures at
best. They have to have the right people in place if they are
to carry out this important mission. This means establishing an
intelligence cadre at the FBI, a specialized integrated
national security work force made up of agents and analysts
with the necessary training and the necessary skills.
We believe that Director Mueller understands the human
resources aspect of institutional change and he understands
that the FBI needs to recruit more broadly and that working on
national security issues requires specialized training for both
analysts and agents. He is currently establishing a program to
certify agents as intelligence officers, a certification that
will be a prerequisite for promotion to the senior ranks of the
FBI. New training programs have been instituted for
intelligence-related subjects. Director Mueller has also
proposed creating an intelligence directorate to include units
for intelligence planning and policy and for the direction of
the analysts and linguists.
Now, some of these changes have been slow in coming, and I
would say to you all bear oversight and scrutiny by Congress in
order to monitor their implementation. We think that Director
Mueller is moving in the right direction. He has begun the
difficult effort to shift the FBI into a new preventive
counterterrorism posture, and we have to ensure that he
succeeds.
The Commission's findings in this regard have not been
entirely reassuring. The field offices that we visited showed
that there was slow progress. Change so far is from the top
down, and we are concerned that without sustained support and
dedicated resources at the highest levels, the management in
the field offices may return to focusing on local concerns over
the national security mission. I would say, parenthetically,
having been at the Department of Justice, you could see this as
you visited field offices--that there was just enormous
pressure on them locally to address whatever the local law
enforcement priority was. We have to make sure that the
national security mission remains strong.
To support the Director's reform efforts and to
institutionalize sustained reform within the FBI that will last
beyond Director Mueller's tenure, the Commission recommends
that the President direct the FBI to develop this intelligence
cadre. To ensure that this work force is focused on the
counterterrorism mission, we need personnel reform in the areas
of recruitment, in the areas of hiring, training, and career
development.
So, first, the FBI should fully implement a selection
process that centers on the need for agents and analysts with
backgrounds and skills appropriate for intelligence work. This
would include knowledge well beyond the traditional law
enforcement background of most FBI agents in the areas of
intelligence, international relations, language technology, and
so on.
Second, the FBI should establish basic training for new
agents and analysts in both the criminal justice and national
security disciplines. These agents should begin their careers
with meaningful assignments in both areas so that each of them
understands both disciplines.
Third, the FBI agents and analysts should have the
opportunity to specialize and follow a career track in either
criminal justice or national security. Certain advance training
courses and assignments to other intelligence agencies should
be prerequisites for advancements along the national security
track.
Fourth, all senior FBI managers should be certified
intelligence officers. This includes those managers working on
law enforcement cases.
Fifth, each field office should have an official at the
deputy level for national security matters with management
oversight to ensure that national priorities are carried out in
the field.
Finally, a dedicated team approach needs to be brought to
bear on national security intelligence operations. The FBI
should institute the integration of analysts, agents,
linguists, and surveillance personnel in the field as well.
Mr. Chairman, we understand that without dedicated
resources, these personnel reforms at the FBI cannot succeed.
To support these reforms, the Commission also recommends that
the FBI align its budget structure to protect the intelligence
program, making sure that the resources are managed according
to national priorities. Congress has a critical role to play in
monitoring these reforms.
The FBI has 28,000 employees, 56 field offices, 400
satellite offices, 47 legal attache offices, and countless
other resources. It is a massive institution and it has a
massive job to perform.
The Director has announced plans and programs to move the
Bureau toward enhanced national security priority, but we
believe he needs to have the full support and oversight of
Congress. The President and Congress have the obligation to
make sure that these essential reforms do not receive only
transitory attention, but become institutionalized in the
creation of a better, stronger FBI.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. Mr. Fielding.
TESTIMONY OF FRED FIELDING,\1\ COMMISSIONER, NATIONAL
COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES
Mr. Fielding. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Coleman, and
Senator Pryor. I would like to join also in a word of
appreciation for the work this Subcommittee has done. It has
been very rewarding to those of us on the Commission to know
that people have grasped what we were hoping they would grasp
and are taking the ball and running with it so expeditiously.
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\1\ The joint prepared statement of Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Fielding
appears in the Appendix on page 00.
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I would like to focus my remarks on the issue of
transitions and improvement of transitions between
administrations. Mr. Chairman, last year you put forward a bill
that would streamline and improve the Presidential appointment
process, and we commend you for that leadership and must tell
you we studied that as part of our deliberations as well, and
we found it to be very thoughtful and instructive and
important. And, as a personal side and aside from the
Commission work, having labored in the vineyards of transitions
and seen all the problems, I must say that your Section 202
contains an awful lot of ideas and captures a lot of the wishes
of people that work on the transition and have to work through
this, and we hope that this goes further.
We see a clear convergence of the Commission's
recommendations with your proposal in the following areas:
First, encouraging Presidential candidates to begin choosing
appointed officials in high-level positions for the new
administration even before the election to expedite the
ultimate confirmation process, to encourage and
institutionalize them to not be afraid to show that they are
planning, because planning is so important.
The second thing is to reduce the number of Presidential
appointed positions in national security agencies that would
require Senate confirmation, which will alleviate the strain of
the current appointment and confirmation system.
And, third, to streamline and consolidate the procedures
such as financial disclosure, reporting requirements to
streamline the overall Presidential appointment process. Both
you and we clearly find that the status quo needs change.
We must recognize that the time of a transition is a time
of great vulnerability for our country. I mean, as we know that
terrorists study and look for our mistakes, this is a prime
time to do something, because it is a period where there are
basically people going out and people coming in, but nobody is
in charge in certain areas unless everyone is vigilant and
realizes the vulnerabilities this creates. The 9/11 story
informed us of the understanding and importance of reforming
this process.
The 2000-2001 transition between administrations occurred
at what we now can see was a crucial point. In the lead-up to
9/11, the USSC Cole had been attacked less than a month before
the Presidential election. Almost all of those involved in the
investigations told us that they strongly suspected the hand of
al Qaeda--and perhaps Bin Laden--were involved in that attack,
but no action was taken to retaliate for the attack on the USSC
Cole in the months before 9/11. Senior Clinton Administration
officials told us that they didn't have a definite answer on
the question of responsibility. Senior Department of Defense
officials with the incoming administration said that by the
time they were in place and the whole Pentagon team was in
place, it was stale. President Bush told us that he was not
told and did not know that the Clinton Administration had
issued an ultimatum to Taliban.
Now we know that Bin Laden expected the United States to
retaliate and expected that there would be some action, but we
can observe how in this particular case the transition process
didn't serve well in the briefing and the handing over of
important national security decisions from one administration
to another. Each incoming administration crafts its own
transition. It can ask the outgoing administration for whatever
it likes, but the latter has no affirmative obligation. The
Clinton Administration did make substantial efforts to brief
its successors, but information was not transferred with the
consistency that was necessary.
The dispute over the 2000 election resulted, to be sure, in
a far shorter transition period than we would have normally
been able to enjoy, but we don't consider the problems that
have been highlighted to be unique to that particular
transition.
Jamie and I both have had considerable experience in
transition and the transition process, that it is never a
seamless one, but the difficulties have been exacerbated by the
growing number of political appointees and positions that
require Senate confirmation, both within the national security
arena and otherwise. Appointees require security clearances
that involve background investigations, security
questionnaires, and sometimes polygraphs. The growing number of
political appointees involve a vast amount of manpower and a
huge effort and a consequent increase amounts of time needed to
complete the clearance process itself.
The delay in the confirmation in 2001 was in some cases
considerable, as was mentioned by the Chairman. Deputy
Secretary Wolfowitz wasn't confirmed until March 2001. The
Undersecretary for Defense for Policy wasn't confirmed until
July. Basically, Secretary Rumsfeld has told us, as he told
you, he didn't have a team in place, and he gave considerable
credit to the expertise of the holdover appointees from the
previous administration who helped him, but he observed that
there was no real initiative that was possible until the new
team was in place.
National security policy-making is too important to be
disrupted by transition between administrations or delay by an
overburdened system. It is just too important. We need to make
clear and complete communication of national security policy
information to a new President. We need to make that a
requirement, and the practice of confirming and obtaining
security clearances for a new administration has to be
streamlined as much as possible.
Our 9/11 Commission recommended reforms in a number of
areas to make sure that the transitions would work more
smoothly and efficiently. First, even before the election,
Presidential candidates should submit names of selected members
of their transition teams to the FBI or whoever is the agency
that is conducting the clearances so that they can obtain their
security clearances immediately so that once the election is
over, they are getting out there and they can commence that
transition on the day after.
Second, immediately after the election, the President-elect
should submit lists to fill the vacancies of his national
security candidates, and these people can then begin getting
their clearances so, hopefully, by January 20, those that need
to be in place will be in place.
Next, we recommended a single Federal agency should be
responsible for providing and maintaining the security
clearances. This would ensure uniform standards. It would
ensure efficiencies, and it would also ensure one
questionnaire, one financial reporting requirement sheet,
anything that can streamline it, and you have to have a single
data base. The agency that we are proposing should be
responsible for administering polygraph tests on behalf of the
organizations that require them.
The next recommendation was that during the transition
periods and no later than January 20, the President-elect
should submit the nominations of his entire new national
security team up through the level of at least undersecretary
on all cabinet departments, and the Senate should adopt, we
would suggest, special rules that require hearings and require
a vote within 30 days of submission of these names, at least
for the national security positions, and that the Senate should
not require confirmation of executive appointees below
executive level three.
Last, as soon as possible after election day, the outgoing
administration should provide the President-elect with a
classified compartmental list that catalogs specific
operational threats around the world and to our national
security. That list should include major military or covert
operations that are ongoing and pending decisions on possible
use of force. Such a document would provide notice and a
checklist inviting the President-elect to inquire and to learn
more, and each party has responsibility in that task.
So, Mr. Chairman, we thank you again for the opportunity to
testify before you. The recommendations we have discussed
before this Subcommittee today on personnel reform at the FBI
and reform of transition between administrations comes directly
from our studies, and we believe they are imperative to
ensuring that our country is safer and more secure. We should
seize the moment. We should move forward with this reform and
with the other reforms that we suggested, but with your counsel
and your direction, we believe the Nation can and will make
wise choices.
And we would be pleased to respond to any of your questions
at this point. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much for your testimony.
I would like to welcome Chairman Collins to this hearing.
Would you like to make any statements before we start to ask
the witnesses questions?
Chairman Collins. No, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank
you for all the work you have done in the area of human capital
and thank you for chairing today's hearing.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
If Congress creates a National Intelligence Director, how
much authority should this individual have over personnel
matters, for example transferring people from one agency to
another agency? Along with that, I would like to quote from the
DHS Inspector General. He issued a report entitled ``DHS
Challenges in Consolidating Terrorist Watch List Information.''
He said: ``In the report, the IG mentions the staffing problems
associated with a terrorist screening center and a terrorist
threat integration center.'' Specifically, the report says,
``in the absence of a strategy and central leadership, there
has been no effective means of coordinating among Federal
agencies to ensure that the TTIC and the TSC obtain the
personnel resources they need.''
Does the 9/11 Commission have a similar view on this issue?
Do you think that a chief human capital officer could fulfill
an important strategic personnel role for the Intelligence
Community? In other words, we are going to have a new Director
and they are going to have to be evaluate the personnel in all
these various agencies, and I would just like your reaction to
whether or not that individual should have working for them a
chief human capital officer, as we have mandated in other
agencies.
Ms. Gorelick. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a couple
of comments. We recommended that there be four responsibilities
of the National Intelligence Director, and one of them is
personnel. The reason for that is that building an intelligence
cadre across the various intelligence agencies--which could
cross-pollinate and they could get to know each other and they
could have common standards--would be enormously helpful. We
didn't address precisely about the ability to move people
around, but the other authority that the National Intelligence
Director would have, in our view, is budget authority, and that
would make a National Counterterrorism Center, for example,
much more effective than the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center currently is or the Terrorist Screening Center, because
it is borrowing people. It doesn't have its own resources. It
has no centralized direction to draw upon other agencies.
So if you combine the personnel authority and the budget
authority that we contemplate, I think both of the issues that
you have raised would be addressed. I, frankly, was unaware and
we did not precisely talk about a position of the sort you
describe, but if I were the National Intelligence Director, I
would certainly want one, because I would want to have someone
to turn to on all of these personnel issues across this vast
array of agencies.
Senator Voinovich. This Subcommittee, as part of our human
capital reform agenda, required a chief human capital officer
in all CFO agencies, it was interesting that when agencies
prepared their GPRA, so many of them never talked about the
personnel that they needed to get the job done. One of the
first things that the new intelligence director must do is
determine whether the Intelligence Community has the employees
that are needed to get the job done.
Following up on that, certain agencies have more personnel
flexibility than others. For example, the FBI does not have the
flexibilities that others do. Would either one of you want to
comment on that? And I will mention they do have some
flexibilities that have been given to them under the previous
law and under the new law that we passed, but in addition to
those, do you think that they ought to have more flexibility?
Mr. Fielding. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think that it is very
important that we understand what we are proposing, because it
fits right into what you are saying. There has to be
flexibility. There are a couple of things that are problems
that we kept seeing. One of them was--I don't know how to call
it. I guess I would say there is a need to break down
subcultures within our Intelligence Community where everyone
develops their own little niche and they don't talk to each
other, as we have seen. The training has to be consistent.
There has to be somebody who oversees and understands what
training there are across the Intelligence Community.
For instance, language proficiency is a horribly
embarrassing situation for us right now. We just don't have it.
Senator Voinovich. I hate to interrupt you, but one of the
things that really drove me right up the wall after 9/11 was we
put out a clarion call, can anybody speak Arabic and Farsi. I
could not believe that our government was not in a position
after we had fought Desert Storm to have those people on board.
Mr. Fielding. That is exactly what I am suggesting, and if
you have a limited number of people, there has to be some way
to make sure that they are at the right place at the right
time, and there has to be a development of training and
recruitment that is consistent so that--this is not going to be
an easy task to get the people that we need. The problem that
we have, candidly, with TTIC, for instance, right now is that,
as Jamie says, they are coming from different agencies, but all
they are doing is filling slots. That doesn't mean that the
person coming from that agency has the expertise that is
needed. Somebody has to figure out what is needed across our
Intelligence Community, and this is a personnel issue.
Ms. Gorelick. If I might just add very quickly in response
to your comment, Mr. Chairman, about the hiring of linguists
and others, it is important to understand that the FBI for
decades had as its model of who to hire an experienced cop. It
would try to hire the best local law enforcement people it
could find, but it did not have a model for an analyst. It did
not have a model for a linguist. It did not have in its hiring
criteria or its flexibilities an effort to bring in that type
of person.
So even when there was this outpouring of support and
people coming forward with language skills, the Bureau was not
able to digest and accept many of the people who volunteered
because of the requirements that it had on the books.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Just one last issue: The security clearance process. Do you
think with the different cultures of all these agencies, that
we will ever be able to get one agency to assume the process?
Mr. Fielding. I think that agencies are sometimes
responsive to congressional directives.
Ms. Gorelick. This is an imperative. I have had clearances
from the DOD, the Department of Energy, the CIA, and the
Justice Department, and all of them started afresh, and that is
frankly ridiculous. I think that is a common experience. It
makes us inflexible, because it is harder to move people
around. It takes a horrificly long time to get clearances. We
impose tremendous burdens on people.
One of the suggestions that was made to the Commission was
that the Federal Government be more welcoming to people from
the private sector who might come in for a period of time and
go back out. If you impose transaction costs that are so high
on people coming in and out, they are just not going to do it.
Once you get in, you are just never going to go back out again,
or it is too high a burden to come in in the first place, and
that is a tragic loss.
Mr. Fielding. Yes. That is really the problem with the
whole security clearance and the whole clearance process--we
make it so difficult for people to come into government, that
the very laws that are supposed to carry out the will of the
people become the very instruments to inhibit the people from
having their very best come in. And I hate to paraphrase,
badly, Plato, but, ``the penalty of wise men who decline to
participate in their government is to be ruled by unwise men,''
and we must not let that happen.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Chairman Collins.
Chairman Collins. I will defer to Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Let me follow up with what you
are saying there. So as I understand your recommendation, right
now we have about seven or so departments that are doing these
security clearances, but your recommendation is to centralize
that and put it into one office. I think there are some here on
the Subcommittee and in the Senate that would like to see that
responsibility be put under the National Intelligence Director.
Would that be agreeable to you all? Is that consistent with
your recommendation?
Mr. Fielding. The recommendation, it is more important to
us that it is in one place, whether it is directly in the NID's
control or whether it is a designated agency. The key is to
have uniformity in the process and also consistency in the
process and consistency in the clearing goals, the timing
goals.
Senator Pryor. Some of this right now, as I understand it,
has been contracted out to the private sector. Does that
concern you that some of these functions are contracted out?
Ms. Gorelick. Well, all of us, I think, have had contact
with individuals who are in the contracting community who
perform these services, and many of the services could easily
be contracted out because they are simply verifying very
mundane facts.
Senator Pryor. Just mundane facts?
Ms. Gorelick. Mundane facts. At the level of judgment, you
would want to have issues determined by government personnel,
but we didn't discuss this as a Commission, so in answering
your question, we are drawing on our own experience, but I
don't personally have an objection to having some of the
services provided external to the Federal employee base.
Mr. Fielding. No. I wouldn't object to that as long as you
had the consistency and standardization.
Senator Pryor. I think that is the key, yes.
Mr. Fielding. That is the key.
Senator Pryor. Yes. Because if you do contract out, you may
lose consistency. You may get different quality of product
back. Do you agree with that? We are giving very serious
thought to the Commission's recommendations and we are just
trying to work our way through some of these.
Let me move onto a different subject, and that is the 9/11
Commission has recommended that we remove the executive level
three appointees from Senate confirmation. What led the
Commission to draw the line at that level? Give us some insight
on how you arrived at that conclusion.
Ms. Gorelick. Well, we just looked at the numbers, really,
and decided that if you were going to try to have the national
security team in place, and I would note that our
recommendations are only for the national security team, and
you wanted to have everyone in place 30 days of the
inauguration, we just looked at what we thought the Senate's
system for confirmation could handle and drew the line that
way. There is no magic to it. What we were trying to do is put
our government in a position where no later than 30 days after
inauguration, there would be an up-and-running functioning
government.
Mr. Fielding. And, Senator, if I may add to that just a
bit, as Jamie said, there is no magic to this. We were trying
to become efficient, especially in the national security
positions, so that we don't have this very dangerous hiatus
that we made reference to earlier.
The other thing that you have to acknowledge is that it
also imposes the requirement on the integrity of the Executive
Branch. When they are appointing people, if there is a problem
that develops within their FBI clearance, for instance, they
must deal with it responsibly if you would do away with the
confirmation hearing, because part of the process of the
confirmation is to deal with that sort of issue.
Senator Pryor. Let me ask, if I can, on this confirmation
issue and the dangerous hiatus that you referred to when one
administration passes the baton to other administration, did
you all get into when there is a party change, if it is worse
during the time of a party change, or is it just inherent in
changing administrations that you might fumble that baton?
Ms. Gorelick. It is worse when the transaction is between
parties, as you can imagine.
Senator Pryor. That is what I would assume.
Ms. Gorelick. Intra-party, there have been issues. I mean,
between the Reagan and Bush Administrations, it wasn't
completely smooth, for example, and Fred can speak to that, but
it is a bigger problem between parties because basically the
government empties out. You have one holdover in each
department, but the White House is vacant. You come in the
first day, and there is nothing, and that is an actually fairly
scary scenario that we both have seen since we have probably,
between the two of us, done more vetting for our respective
parties than maybe anybody else, and we have worked, both of
us, on transitions. To arrive in an office with nothing there
is not a comforting picture.
Mr. Fielding. Clearly, to confirm your suspicions, it is
much more difficult when there is a change in party just
because ordinarily you have more than one person staying over,
holding over or even desiring to hold over if it is the same
party, but there is none. And what Jamie says, people don't
seem to realize when you go into a White House, for instance,
and the policy shop of other departments as well, you open the
file drawers and they are empty, and there is no little book
left behind saying this is it. So it, again, requires the
integrity of both parties to this thing to make sure that
everybody hands off and understands what is going on.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is interesting
to note that all the folks at the table here have been involved
in running operations at a local level, State level. I was
involved in a transition as a mayor. I walked in and there was
nothing in the file, nothing there, and obviously we can't
afford to do that.
I would note with interest and I would suspect that the
transition recommendations are relevant even if there is a
continuation of an administration. In other words, folks move
on. There is a lot of discussion today of who is in, who is
out. I would suspect that the timeliness of these things, the
streamlining of process, are just as relevant. It may not be as
much a conflict, but just as relevant in the transition of one
administration into a second term.
Ms. Gorelick. You are unlikely to have everyone at the
State Department walking out the door at the same time. The
President would be in a position, presumably, to ask his
appointees to stay until their successors are in place.
Senator Coleman. I am just looking at our end in terms of
speeding up clearances and some of the things that we would
need to do just to make it easier to move in so folks can keep
moving at the same pace.
Mr. Fielding. Well, actually, some of the things that are
proposed, especially the pending bill, are needed regardless of
transitions. It is needed for the efficiency of government, for
getting people in. Again, as I said, we must be sure we are
getting people in and not making the price of entry so
prohibitive that they don't want to come into public service.
Senator Coleman. I would also compliment you for your
boldness in the recommendation to encourage candidates to begin
choosing appointed officials in high-level positions before the
election. I presume you have got one candidate out there
looking--what is the message today. You have another candidate
trying to get control of the message, and no matter what we do,
it is very political. So if you put forth the name of anyone
and that gets out, that runs the risk of getting off the
message of creating an issue.
Prospects of realistically getting that done, how would you
rate that?
Mr. Fielding. As I said earlier, I think that the big
problem is, from my experience, a candidate doesn't want to
acknowledge that he or she is so sure that they are going to
win that they are picking their cabinet, and so you have to
force them to do it, because if it is publicly known that they
are forced to do something, then it is easy for them to do what
they would otherwise logically do.
Ms. Gorelick. We would like to make it be, and appear to
be, irresponsible not to begin thinking about the next steps
even when the election is pending and, at the very least, to
identify those who would be responsible for a transition.
Senator Coleman. If there was a way that you could assure
that would not get caught up in the political debate, that
would be helpful. I am not sure how that is done. Again, I
support the recommendation, but the reality is you put forth
any name in any position and it becomes a subject of discussion
at a time when you want to discuss something else, perhaps, so
a great challenge.
One of the issues that has come up in the course of these
hearings has been the question of accountability. A number of
my colleagues have said we have read the 9/11 Commission
Report; there were some things that were not done; there was
follow-through that didn't happen. And yet there is the
question of accountability. We are talking about making change
and changing systems here, but do we need to have kind of a
public accounting of who is responsible, who messed up before
we go forward? That issue still hangs out there and I am just
not sure it has been resolved.
Ms. Gorelick. We talked about this. We decided that for
purposes and our charter, the best thing we could do is lay out
all the facts. If we, ourselves, tried to decide who should
remain in government and who should lose their jobs, it would
be a morass from which we might not ever re-emerge, and it
would detract from our efforts to do the things that we thought
were more important. But if I were running any one of the
executive agencies whose conduct is the subject of our very
detailed findings, I would review them and determine whether
there should be accountability on the part of anyone who
continues to work for me. I just think that is basic
management, and that material is there for everyone to see.
Senator Coleman. Looking at the changes, one of the
concerns with regard to the FBI, the Commission noted the
concern about the sustainability of the change. Right now, it
appears Director Mueller is moving in the right direction,
right attitude, right approach, but there is concern about the
long-term sustainability, and the issue then comes about all
this bears oversight.
Do you have any suggestions about how we do a better job on
oversight? I think we are moving forward on a lot of these
recommendations, but the one area that is probably going to
take a little more time is on our end. With all that we have to
do and the demands on time, can you just talk a little bit
about the type of oversight that you would like to see? What
should we be doing that we are not doing now?
Mr. Fielding. Our experience with the intelligence
oversight in particular was that everyone, when the door was
closed and the cameras were off, acknowledged to us that the
system was inefficient and was ineffective. We made what were
considered to be bold recommendations, in all due respect, to
how Congress should reform itself, and maybe they were bold and
maybe they were unattainable, people would tell us, but given
the background and given the subject matter that we were
discussing, if we couldn't make such bold recommendations out
of September 11, when would we ever make such bold
recommendations?
So just to wrap up, there is a need to reform. There is a
need to take the politics out of oversight, and we hope that
you will study it and come up with a solution.
Ms. Gorelick. If I might add to Fred's comments, one of the
reasons that we were so prescriptive in our suggestions and
recommendations with regard to the FBI is that we were quite
conflicted given the performance we saw there. We concluded if
the FBI moves in these very clear directions and there is
pressure from Congress to do so, then it can get where it needs
to go. We have outlined what we think oversight of the FBI and
its progress should look like in the near-term; we were very
specific. In general, our observation with regard to
congressional oversight is that oversight committees should ask
of each agency, ``What is your biggest challenge?'' ``What is
your strategy to meet that challenge?'' and ``What are the
obstacles to your achieving that strategy?'' What happens too
often is that members and staff try to mimic what the Executive
Branch is doing and try to oversee particular programs and
activities. At the same time, no one is looking more
strategically at the overarching obstacles.
I would suggest that you look at the larger picture, force
the agencies to tell you what their strategies are and hold
them to it.
Mr. Fielding. If I could just add one more thought to that,
the problem too often is that oversight means ``come tell us
when you did something wrong,'' and I think oversight has to be
more than that.
Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Madam Chairman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin
again by commending you for all the work that you have done on
human capital. There is no one in the U.S. Senate who
understands better than Senator Voinovich that the people are
the key.
I was struck in the 9/11 Commission's Report by many
phrases, but one that stuck in my mind was the phrase ``good
people can overcome bad structures; they should not have to.''
I am hoping that the work that this Subcommittee and others
have done in the past 6 weeks will produce the kind of good
structure that enhances the ability of good people, and I want
to thank both of you for all of your efforts and all of your
contributions to the Commission's work. It really is critical.
I think there is nothing that is more important that we will do
before we adjourn than the reform of our Intelligence
Community, and I really appreciate your being here today.
Earlier this year, I visited what is known as TTIC, the
Terrorist Threat Integration Center. In many ways, the National
Counterterrorism Center is a beefed up, more robust version of
TTIC. I was struck when I visited TTIC by the fact that with
the exception of the director and a few of his deputies,
everyone else that I saw, everyone else who briefed me, was so
young, and what had occurred to me that what the agencies that
were supporting TTIC were doing is they were sending very
bright eager-beaver young people, but people who had very
little experience, and as we know, it takes a great deal of
experience to develop the judgment, the intuition, and the
ability to be effective.
So one of my concerns is making sure that the NCTC gets the
best people. How will we bring that about? Should we give the
director of the center direct personnel authority he does not
have right now? At present, John Brennan has to rely on the
goodwill of the CIA and the FBI and all the agencies that
support him. If I were the CIA director, why would I want to
send my best people over to this agency? I need them.
So how will we ensure that the National Counterterrorism
Center has the high quality analysts? I don't mean to in any
way disparage of the ability of the people now working at TTIC,
but how can we assure that we get the kind of experienced
analysts that is necessary, in my view, to really bring the
center to that next level?
Ms. Gorelick. Senator Collins, your having visited TTIC and
looked at this ensures that you have the same perspective on
TTIC that we did. We came to the same conclusion. It is not
what it needs to be. You can ensure that it will be what it
needs to be when it is the National Counterterrorism Center,
first, by making sure the person who runs it is of a very
senior level. We recommend that it is headed by someone at the
deputy secretary level person, not someone buried in the
bureaucracy. Second, it has to have its own dedicated
personnel, and you can ensure that it gets the best personnel
because if, as we recommend, the National Counterterrorism
Center reports directly to the National Intelligence Director
and he or she has budget authority. That is a pretty good lever
for getting the very best people.
Third, one of our observations was that there are too many
different fusions centers all over town. So if you are in the
Defense Department, you are building a fusion center and
bringing in people from everywhere else, and the same is true
at the State Department, at the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and it
is a bewildering alphabet soup of fusion centers. Well,
everyone who wants those personnel wants the very best, and
everyone who has the personnel doesn't want to give the very
best to a different agency's center. If you can eliminate the
other fusion centers, you could save those precious experienced
analysts for the National Counterterrorism Center.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Fielding.
Mr. Fielding. And there again, just by giving the authority
to one person and having uniform procedures set up and uniform
policies, you enhance the chances that you are going to get the
people. As I said earlier, unfortunately, and I don't mean to
disparage anybody that is at TTIC now either, but some of them
are brought there simply to get the numbers in, and as somebody
observed, you are not going to send your best person if you can
keep them by your side. You are going to send somebody else.
The other thing that may help this is if the National
Intelligence Director also has the authority to establish
across the Intelligence Community a single senior intelligence
service so that this is a career and these people can move
where they are needed, if you will, across the government. And
I think that would make some sense too.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. We could have you
stay here for another half hour, but we have two other panels.
We really appreciate your being here today, and I was really
impressed with your testimony. Thank you very much for the
great service you have given your country, the hours and hours
that you have spent. Thank God we have people like you.
Ms. Gorelick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Fielding. Thank you, and thank you for your support.
Senator Voinovich. The second panel will come forward, and
it consists of Mark Bullock. He is the Assistant Director of
Administrative Services Division at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
Mr. Bullock, I understand that you were in my home town.
Mr. Bullock. Yes, I was.
Senator Voinovich. He took over after Van Harp, and I
thought to myself isn't it wonderful that we have somebody that
is in administrative services that has actually had some real
work experience.
Mr. Bullock. Absolutely.
Senator Voinovich. Our other witnesses are John Turnicky, a
Special Assistant to the Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency for Security, and Christopher Mihm, the Managing
Director of Strategic Issues for the Government Accountability
Office, who I have worked with for the last 5\1/2\ years, since
I came to the Senate.
Mr. Mihm. Yes, sir. It has been an honor.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you for all of your efforts and
the great help that GAO has given me in this Subcommittee.
Mr. Mihm. Thank you, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you for being here, and we will
begin testimony with Mr. Bullock. I would ask you to keep your
statements to 5 minutes. We will continue with 6-minute rounds
of questioning for the Members of the Subcommittee.
Mr. Bullock, thank you.
TESTIMONY OF MARK STEVEN BULLOCK,\1\ ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
Mr. Bullock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to
be here, and thank you to, although Madam Chairman has
departed, to the other Senators for having me.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Bullock appears in the Appendix
on page 00.
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Again, as you stated, I am Mark Bullock. I am Assistant
Director for Administrative Services with the FBI.
And, also, I am the Human Capital Officer for the FBI. I am
responsible for recruiting and hiring.
Senator Voinovich. Pardon me. You are the Chief Human
Capital Officer at the FBI?
Mr. Bullock. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. OK.
Mr. Bullock. I am responsible for recruiting, hiring,
personnel policy administration, our career development
program, and our background investigations, be they FBI
employees or executive appointments from the White House.
Again, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address this
body.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 have brought about
profound changes in the FBI, not only in terms of realigning
our priorities and resources to prevent another terrorist
attack, but also in transforming our work force to carry out
our intelligence and investigative missions both in the near
term and in the future. The FBI success in preventing
terrorists acts and preventing U.S. National security is
intrinsically linked to our success in elevating and
integrating the role of intelligence in our operational
programs.
As stated by Jamie Gorelick, I will extract some of the
words from the primary 9/11 human capital recommendation
affecting the FBI. Basically, we have to establish a
specialized and integrated national security work force,
consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance
specialists who are recruited, trained, and rewarded and
retained to ensure the development of an institutional culture
with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security.
The Commission's recommendations and implementing actions
are fully consistent with the intelligence directorate, the
intelligence career service, and newly-formed career tracks of
special agents that were announced by Director Mueller in April
2004. These changes reflect the vision and direction that he
has set for the FBI in its recently revised FBI strategic plan
covering the next 5 years and the Bureau's first ever human
capital plan. Additionally, these changes begin to implement
the guiding principles that are set out in the FBI's human
talent for intelligence, production, and concept of operations.
Underlying the changes in career tracks announced by
Director Mueller is the concept of an integrated intelligence
career service within the FBI that is fully compatible with the
Bureau's investigative mission. From a human capital
standpoint, there are three critical elements to building that
capacity: Formal career tracks, including intelligence for
special agents; formal career tracks for intelligence analysts,
linguist, and surveillance specialists; and the intelligence
officer certification program. I would like to briefly describe
some of the elements of these programs.
For the agent career track, we will have four core tracks.
What we envision is four core tracks: Counterterrorism,
counterintelligence track, an intelligence track, cyber and
criminal track. A candidate would be selected for new agents
training. They would go to Quantico, and upon graduating
Quantico, they would go to one of our small- to medium-sized
offices, which are 41 offices out of our 56 field divisions,
and they would serve in those fields divisions for
approximately 3 years. They would receive various assignments,
becoming a generalist for those 3 years. Then they would be
transferred to one of our top 15 offices, where they would be
assigned in compliance with their core track designator, be it
intelligence, counter-intelligence, cyber, and so forth. They
would begin the specialization process. They would receive
advanced training and more complex assignments.
For all agents, the new agent training curriculum has been
modified to integrate core intelligence objectives, and that is
at this point now down at Quantico.
Our analyst track would be very similar to the agent track.
We would bring people in, in a centralized fashion, meaning
that you would compete on a national basis. They would be
selected based upon the skills as deemed needed by program
managers. They would go through an interview and assessment
process and then the background investigation. Upon being
selected, they would go to the College of Analytical Studies
for their basic training. I would like to add that at the
College of Analytical Studies, the curriculum was just revised
and started with these revised processes this week. After
completing the College of Analytical Studies, they would be
assigned to a headquarters or field office in a system
fashioned to the agents. They would be assigned to one of the
four core tracks, just like the agents, and they would have
their assignments in line with all-source analyst, a reports
officer, or an operations specialist, the all-source analyst
being more of a strategic analyst, the reports officer
preparing the reports, and the operations specialist being an
analyst that is more technical in nature, working on particular
cases.
The Office of Intelligence would establish the standards
and criteria for professional development opportunities for our
analysts. The analyst's career development would include
rotations among field offices, headquarters, and our legate
offices, and analysts would have to be provided with the proper
work environment. We have to staff our offices so our analysts
and agents can have the access to the classified materials that
they would need. They would have to be provided with the
appropriate analytical tools to successfully do their job; and
assignments within the Office of Intelligence, agents and
analysts at some point would have to become interchangeable.
Eventually, that would extend to management and supervisory
positions as well.
We envision the special agent career track in intelligence
and the intelligence analyst career tracks intersecting at the
intelligence officer certification program. The FBI
intelligence officer certification program would be a set of
formal requirements satisfied through a combination of advanced
education and specific intelligence-related disciplines or
problem set. The completion of progressively changing and
complex assignments in all three of the analytical work areas
that I mentioned previously.
The FBI currently is the only Intelligence Community
partner that does not have an intelligence officer
certification process. We feel in developing this process,
which we will have developed by January 2005, that would make
the FBI more attractive for members of the Intelligence
Community to be detailed to the FBI. It will make our
intelligence officers more attractive to be received as
detailees in other Intelligence Community organizations.
That completes my opening statement, and I will be happy to
answer any questions that you may have, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. Mr. Turnicky.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN TURNICKY,\1\ SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE DCI FOR
SECURITY, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Mr. Turnicky. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and distinguished
Members of the Subcommittee. I am dual-hatted in my current
position, one as the Special Assistant to the DCI for Security,
which is the Intelligence Community role, and secondarily, I am
the Director of Security for the CIA, which is the internal CIA
role.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Turnicky appears in the Appendix
on page 00.
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In my role as the Special Assistant to the Director of
Central Intelligence for Security, I would like to share with
you ongoing initiatives that have already improved security
processes in the Intelligence Community. The war on terrorism
has underscored the need for the Intelligence Community to
facilitate the sharing of intelligence information while
protecting sources and methods. The Intelligence Community's
security professionals play a pivotal role in monitoring the
impact of security actions on intelligence operations and
analysis. We believe the Intelligence Community had made
significant strides in standardizing policies and procedures
that provide a much stronger foundation than that which existed
prior to September 11, 2001.
In March 2002, the Director of Central Intelligence
envisioned the need to centralize the management and oversight
of Intelligence Community security policies and procedures, and
he endorsed the formation of a Director of Central Intelligence
Special Security Center, the DSSC. The center is pursuing
initiatives to produce more effective and efficient security
practices within the Intelligence Community. The center is
working to ensure that existing common security investigative
and adjudicative practices are consistently implemented. As
facilitated by the DSSC, the Intelligence Community security
directors have collaborated on strategies to improve and
strengthen common security policies and practices, using the
common guidelines for background investigations and
adjudications, specifically the Director of Central
Intelligence directives, executive orders, and national
security directives. The Intelligence Community security
directors strive to meet the requirements for consistent
security processing while reducing redundant processes and
remaining flexible enough for unique requirements.
Some ongoing actions include performing policy review to
promote standardization and reciprocity within the Intelligence
Community, conducting oversight on the implementation of
security policies, standardizing personnel security training to
foster uniformity throughout the clearance process, and
improving interagency reciprocity and security clearances to
reduce adjudicative processing redundancies across the
Intelligence Community. In addition to the ongoing actions
outlined above, a central security clearance data base
repository is in operation at over 100 facilities worldwide and
will become the single source for the Intelligence Community's
security professionals as the clearance and validation data
base. The repository may also support a number of information-
sharing activities within the Intelligence Community, including
intelligence dissemination, expedited personnel security
clearance processing, and our common badge initiative.
In response to the Subcommittee's request for views on its
propose legislation to create a centralized investigative
service under a national intelligence director, it is premature
at this point to provide an official position on legislation
until the President presents his proposed intelligence reform
legislation which will address many of these issues. The
President has already issued an executive order to strengthen
the management of the Intelligence Community, which includes
the direction to the DCI in its role as the leader of the
Intelligence Community to establish common security access
standards for managing and handling intelligence systems,
information, and products. The President agrees with the 9/11
Commission's recommendations for improving information sharing
while protecting national security information.
The Intelligence Community's security directors believe
that changes implemented by the security community since
September 11, 2001 have significantly improved the use of
common standards and practices. We will continue to work
together to streamline and improve the security process.
In closing, I thank the Subcommittee for providing the
Intelligence Community the opportunity to testify on this
important issue, and I will be happy to address any questions
as we go on. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. Mr. Mihm.
TESTIMONY OF J. CHRISTOPHER MIHM,\1\ MANAGING DIRECTOR OF
STRATEGIC ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Mihm. Chairman Voinovich, Senator Coleman, and Senator
Pryor, it is always an enormous honor to appear before you and
today in particular to talk about how strategic human capital
management can help drive some of the transformational
challenges that the Intelligence Community faces. As you noted
in your opening statement, Mr. Chairman, this Subcommittee, and
more generally the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, has
had a longstanding interest and concern, certainly predating
September 11, in human capital issues and intelligence and
homeland security concerns.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Mihm appears in the Appendix on
page 00.
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As a result of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission,
related legislative proposals, and of course the
administration's executive orders and plans, Congress and other
decisionmakers confront a series of very difficult technical
and policy questions related to intelligence in homeland
security; however, as the work of the 9/11 Commission clearly
demonstrated, at the center of these questions is the need to
fundamentally change the culture of Intelligence Community. As
the 9/11 Commission noted, the hard and the important work at
issue is not the wiring of the agencies, but the cultures
within individual agencies.
Thus, my major point today is that experience has
repeatedly shown that in organizations where people are the
most important asset, and which is clearly the case with
intelligence agencies, people or human capital strategies must
be at the center of any serious change management initiative,
and that, of course, was exactly the point that Senator Collins
was making.
My written statement extensively details our work on the
FBI's human capital efforts and issues Congress needs to
consider, in our view, in creating a single organization to
handle personnel background investigations. In the interest of
time, I am going to touch on four key human capital strategies
that our work suggests to be critical in more broadly
transforming governance, including intelligence and homeland
security.
First, key mergers and transformation practices can be used
to help guide Intelligence Community reforms. Working with
experienced leaders in the public and private sectors,
including those that have experience in intelligence and
defense-related issues, we identified a set of practices,
lessons learned, and key implementation steps that successful
mergers, transformations, and large scale change management
initiatives go through in order to be successful. It is our
belief that this work can also be helpful as we consider
changes to the Intelligence Community.
Second, and this relates, Mr. Chairman, directly to your
question about a chief human capital officer for the NID,
experience also shows that successful change management
initiatives in large public and private organizations often
take years to accomplish. I have had the opportunity to hear
you speak of your experience in Ohio as governor about how it
takes a lot of time to turn around an organization that has
been in trouble. The appointment of agency chief operating
officers is one mechanism that we think should be considered to
obtain the sustained and inspired attention to make the needed
changes. In addition to individual agencies chief operating
officers, Congress may also want to consider having the
National Intelligence Director appoint a chief operating
officer.
In other words, there are a range of important management
and transformation issues, including not only those dealing
with human capital, that warrant high level and sustained
attention. This executive could serve under term appointment,
to institutionalize accountability over extended periods and
help ensure that the long-term change management and
organizationally change initiatives are successfully
implemented.
A major theme of Mr. Fielding's comments earlier this
morning was the fact that we have greater vulnerability during
periods of transition. In our view, a chief operating officer
under a term appointment could be one, but only one, of the
vehicles that Congress could consider in order to maintain this
continuity.
Third, one of the major challenges facing the Intelligence
Community is moving from the culture of the need to know to
need to share. An effective performance management system is a
vital tool to aligning the organization with desired results
and creating what we have often called a line of sight, that is
showing how individual, team, unit, and organizational results
are all aligned with one another, showing individuals how what
they do on a day-to-day basis contributes to larger results
outside the organization. The performance management system can
send unmistakable messages about behavior the organization
values and the relationship of that behavior to achieving
results. We have also found in looking at the performance
management systems around the world that these systems can be
effective tools in maintaining clarity and continuity during
periods of political transition.
Fourth and finally, Congress has authorized significant
changes in the last 3 years, often under the leadership of this
Subcommittee, regarding how the Federal work force is managed.
As Congress considers reforms to the Intelligence Community's
human capital policies and practices, in our view, it should
also consider whether those agencies have the necessary
institutional infrastructures in order to effectively implement
those changes. Do they have a strategic plan in place? Do they
have a human capital plan that is aligned with that strategic
plan? Do they have the capabilities to effectively use those
flexibilities?
In summary, over the last past several years, we in GAO
have conducted, often at the request of this Subcommittee,
extensive work on government transformation and critical
management issues that we believe could be helpful to the
Intelligence Community as it considers its reforms. We would be
more than happy to share that information with them and to
continue to assist Congress in its oversight responsibilities.
Thank you. I would obviously be happy to take any questions
you may have.
Senator Voinovich. I want to thank all of the witnesses for
their testimony.
Mr. Mihm, some agencies, like the CIA, operate outside of
Title 5, while others, like the FBI, still work within the
confines of Title 5. If we create a National Intelligence
Director, which I am sure we are going to do, how much
authority should that individual have over personnel matters?
It gets back to the question I asked the first panel regarding
transferring people and making sure they have that strategy
that you were just talking about. Do we have the right people
to get the job done?
Mr. Mihm. There are a couple of issues, sir. One, as you
were mentioning, is the different levels of authorities that
agencies within the Intelligence Community already enjoy. It
creates an unlevel playing field. Mark was talking about that
in his statement.
The second issue, though, and here we think that the model
that Congress used for the Department of Homeland Security
could be a good one. That is, provide the National Intelligence
Director the authority and the responsibility to create a
personnel system, Congress should not feel burdened or
responsible with legislating specifically what an integrated
personnel system would look like for the Intelligence
Community; rather, Congress should place that responsibility
with the NID, as you did with Department of Homeland Security,
with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of OPM
to come up with that system and then issue regulations and work
with the employees as appropriate to define that system.
Senator Voinovich. Would you allow them to have the power
to move people, if he thought they were needed, from one agency
to another?
Mr. Mihm. We haven't done extensive work on that, but it
seems that certainly that is the model that Congress has used
and agencies have used in other instances, and it has proven
itself very successful. Obviously the way to the top in the
defense community is the willingness to move around and accept
different billets. Overseas, when we have looked at personnel
systems, for example, in the United Kingdom, they have a
program called Fast Stream where the way to move up and one of
the keys to an individual's success is their willingness and
ability to be successful in a variety of different positions,
some of them direct service delivery, some of them policy
shops, some of them administration. That is both how you tap
into the best talent, that is how you develop the best talent,
and that is also how you make sure that you have----
Senator Voinovich. In other words, when they come into the
agency they know they can be transferred, and that would be
part of their career plan. They should understand that is what
could happen to them?
Mr. Mihm. Yes, sir, and especially if you aspire to the
highest levels of leadership. In the case of the U.K., it is an
absolute requirement. It was also at least implicitly one of
the thoughts behind the creation of the Senior Executive
Service here in the Executive Branch--that there would be
movement across agencies. Of course, for a variety of reasons,
that hasn't played out, but the philosophy is still the same,
that we have a tendency here to assume that the only people
that can run things or contribute to a certain organization are
those that grew up within that organization. Our friends in the
Partnership for Public Service have talked often about the need
to bring in talent from the outside, but equally important in
our view is the need to be able to circulate talent around, to
realize that there are certain change management, management
competencies that really do work in a variety of different
settings, and we need to be able to have the capacity to
leverage those.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Mr. Bullock, Congressman Frank Wolf, are you familiar with
the personnel-related reforms that have been put in the House
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, Judiciary and Related
Agencies, of the Appropriations Committee?
Mr. Bullock. Yes, I am, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Most of those authorities exist in
current law or regulation. In addition, immediately following
September 11, the Office of Personnel Management granted the
Justice Department the authority to re-employ retirees, and I
am going to ask you a series of questions. Did the FBI utilize
this authority? Is the FBI using the existing authority for
retention and relocation bonuses? Has the FBI ever requested
critical pay authority from OPM? Is the Bureau using category
ranking for hiring, a flexibility that Senator Akaka and I
added to the Homeland Security Legislation?
The point I am making is that there are flexibilities that
we authorized in the Homeland Security legislation that we
expected agencies to use. I am interested in knowing are you
using them and what additional flexibilities do you believe
that you will need in order to get the job done?
Mr. Bullock. Yes, we are using some of these flexibilities
with relocation bonuses, retention bonuses, and so forth. We
have used them where appropriate. We have brought individuals
back on the roles as retired annuitants and so forth and
received the appropriate authorization to do that.
Senator Voinovich. So you have re-employed retirees?
Mr. Bullock. Oh, absolutely, sir. Where we fall short is in
our ability to create the career track that we want to create
for our intelligence analysts. Under our current performance
standards, the OPM performance standards, we can only with our
analysts go up to a GS-14. If you go to a GS-15, you have to be
a supervisor. We would like to have the ability to go to the
equivalent of a SES for our analysts and reward them for
additional expertise and demonstrated ability in doing
analytical work as opposed to having to become a manager.
Senator Voinovich. The Bureau does not have the flexibility
to create non-supervisory SES and GS-15 positions for
intelligence personnel, and you would like to have that
authority?
Mr. Bullock. We certainly would.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. If there are any other
flexibilities that you would need, I would really be interested
to have that.
Mr. Bullock. OK. I could get a comprehensive list for you.
I know the others that you are aware of, the locality pay, the
ability to have locality pay in certain cities. They are
looking at that from a governmentwide perspective, but I can
get a comprehensive list to you if that would be preferable.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. We are working on this right
now and would love to have that.
Senator Pryor.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Turnicky, let me ask you something about your
repository that you mentioned. Tell me a little bit more about
that.
Mr. Turnicky. The data base?
Senator Pryor. Yes.
Mr. Turnicky. We began back in 1998, 1999 to create a data
base that would have in that everyone within the Intelligence
Community who possesses a top secret SCI clearance.
Senator Pryor. OK. Hold on. Stop right there. So does that
mean that when you are doing a background check, does that help
you do the security check, background check?
Mr. Turnicky. What that helps me do, sir, is that if I am
going to be receiving people into CIA, for example, from NSA,
as opposed to having to send paper or make phone calls or do
whatever, there are people at NSA, there are people at CIA and
throughout the Intelligence Community who can check that data
base to make sure that people have the appropriate clearances
to come to a given meeting or to see a specific document,
whatever it may be.
Senator Pryor. Let me stop right there, because we just had
a couple of 9/11 commissioners, and I think one or both of them
said that they had to go through a security clearance with a
number of different agencies and it was cumbersome and slow and
all this. Are you saying that you already have something in
place that would take care of that, for lack of a better term,
kind of a one-stop shopping?
Mr. Turnicky. It is close to a one-stop shop for the
Intelligence Community right now, and I think what the
commissioners may also have been referring to is the fact that
if an individual is cleared, say, by NRO and they are coming
into NSA, that their clearance needs to be within a 5-year
scope, the background investigation and if a polygraph is
required. As long as it meets those requirements, then it can
be transferred over.
Senator Pryor. OK. Now, is your data base open to all
intelligence agencies?
Mr. Turnicky. It is open to personnel, some personnel, not
to everyone, again because it is classified data base, but
there are people at the various agencies and throughout the
Intelligence Community that would have access to that data
base.
Senator Pryor. All right. Well, I guess what I am trying to
figure out is, we have a 9/11 Commission recommendation that we
pretty much put all the background checks, all the security
clearances, in one central location. Is it fair to say that you
have the central location already developed?
Mr. Turnicky. I would say it is fair to say that for the
Intelligence Community, but when you go governmentwide, that is
not there yet. The military DOD has JPAS.
Senator Pryor. Well, OK, but I think what we are talking
about today is pretty much limited to the Intelligence
Community.
And if this Congress, if we decided that this new function,
this more centralized function, should be at the National
Intelligence Director's office, is your data base, is your
system transferable over to the NID?
Mr. Turnicky. We would be very flexible.
Senator Pryor. Well, that is good to know. What are your
thoughts on that subject, on whether we should have one
centralized place to do security clearances? Does that make
sense to you?
Mr. Turnicky. I think, speaking again from the Intelligence
Community perspective only, is what we really require is the
ability to be agile, the ability to be flexible, and to have
the ability to prioritize. These are critical elements
throughout the Intelligence Community. The numbers of
clearances that we in the Intelligence Community deal with
compared to governmentwide are minuscule. So right now, I
believe we have that flexibility, and whatever we come up with
here, from the Intelligence Community's perspective, I would
just like to make sure that we maintain that ability to be
agile, to be flexible, and to prioritize.
Senator Pryor. How long does it take you to do a security
clearance on average?
Mr. Turnicky. It depends on the type of clearance. On an
applicant coming into the agency, the security aspect of it
will take anywhere from, on average, between 90 and 105 days.
On an industrial clearance, it is going to take a little bit
longer. The priorities as they are right now are applicants
followed by the industrial.
Senator Pryor. Well, let me ask this: We talked about this
with the previous panel. When a new administration comes in and
they are putting their national security team together there in
the White House, do you prioritize those and try to get those
turned around?
Mr. Turnicky. For the most part, we in the Intelligence
Community would not be doing the background investigations on
those people. That would be the Bureau.
Mr. Bullock. That would be the FBI.
Senator Pryor. OK. And, Mr. Bullock, how long does it take
you to do those background checks?
Mr. Bullock. Those background checks are typically done
within 30 days, and understand that we have a unit in my
division that would coordinate those assignments, and then
those leaders are sent out to agents across the field to
promptly conduct those investigations.
Senator Pryor. OK. Mr. Mihm, you have made a
recommendation, as I understand it, that the National
Intelligence Director should appoint a Chief Operating Officer;
is that what you called it?
Mr. Mihm. Yes, sir.
Senator Pryor. And what would those functions be?
Mr. Mihm. It would be basically to help the NID deal with a
series of large scale functional management (personnel,
information technology, financial management, etc.) as well as
some of the transformation issues. Typically what we often see,
and it is not surprising, political appointees come to town
with agendas and experiences and backgrounds in policy and
programs. They don't often have as well rounded backgrounds and
they don't get as thorough an examination on their management
capabilities. That coupled with the long-term changes that are
needed in many agencies in the Intelligence Community generally
lead us to think that a Chief Operating Officer or some similar
vehicle could help sustain change over time.
Senator Pryor. Would that be a career position? In other
words, would that continue from administration to
administration?
Mr. Mihm. There are any number of options, sir. For
example, it could be a term appointment. This model is used
very often in other countries where it is a term appointment
with a strict performance contract. If the goals in the
contract are met, the performance reward is provided. If the
goals in the contract are not met, the euphemism is they are
urged to achieve excellence elsewhere. Since we are dealing
with functional management, you can hold people accountable.
Let us get a good personnel system in place. Let us get a good
financial management, IT system in place.
Really having some day-to-day thinking about the internal
management of the organization is what is needed, freeing up
the top leadership to think of the policy and the programs.
Senator Pryor. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to follow up with Senator Pryor's comment about the
Chief Operating Officer, COO. Is this something that needs
congressional action or is this something that the President
can do by executive order?
Mr. Mihm. There is any number of models. The President
could do a version of this certainly by executive order. The
term appointment would probably require some congressional
action. But if Congress doesn't want to go that far yet, you
could certainly urge the NID to appoint a very senior person
that would have the responsibility for integrating functional
management, elevating attention to these, and leading the
transformation, that would help as well.
Senator Coleman. And I turn to Mr. Bullock and Mr.
Turnicky. From the Agency's perspective, the FBI's perspective,
is there anything like this in place now, and how would you
react to that recommendation?
Mr. Turnicky. At this point, I would not be aware of what
is in place at the agency on that, sir.
Mr. Bullock. No, we don't have a similar position in the
FBI at that point.
Senator Coleman. Any reaction to the recommendations? I am
not holding you responsible for making policy, but as folks in
the field who are going to deal with a lot of stuff.
Mr. Bullock. The concern I would have is seeing how that
would actually work when you have resources from different
departments and different agencies and others in the department
with at least partial responsibility that would be redundant
with this position. How would it actually work, and would we
ultimately result in just a greater level of bureaucracy if we
were to put this in place? So I think it would have to be
analyzed and structured properly to avoid that.
Senator Coleman. And I think that is always a concern, are
we making changes in a way that increase efficiency and
capacity or are we creating more bureaucracy? So I think
clearly that is the issue.
We have talked a lot about talent and the need to, like Mr.
Mihm, you said, circulate talent. Is there enough talent to go
around, Mr. Turnicky? Are there enough folks out there with the
language skills, the educational skills, the international
relation skills to meet the needs of this expanded focus we are
having on intelligence?
Mr. Turnicky. My function, again, is in the security end of
it, and I can tell you from the numbers of applicants and
contractors who are coming in, there are certainly plenty of
people out there that we are processing. I think there is
always--just speaking from the security perspective, there is a
shortage, I think, governmentwide of investigators. There is a
shortage of people who are qualified in the adjudicative realm,
and we are working towards training programs community-wide to
train adjudicators so that they are all using common standards
throughout the entire IC.
But this is something we are dealing with not only as the
IC. I think that is governmentwide, the shortage of
investigators.
Senator Coleman. Mr. Bullock.
Mr. Bullock. I think as far as the people with the right
skills, with our agent position, we hire with the critical
skill and diversity. We have been able to meet our objective in
both getting enough critical skills and diversity this year.
With the intelligence analysts, we have had approximately
57,000 applicants apply since February of this year for our
intelligence analyst position. Again, applicants and having the
right applicants are two different things, and we are still
sorting through those, but it looks like by the end of October,
we will have on board approximately 800 intelligence analysts
after filtering through those 57,000 applicants and
approximately 1,200 agents with the critical skills in most
areas.
Where we are having the most difficulty is hiring the
agents with the language skills, barring Spanish. Arabic, Urdu,
Russian, Chinese, we still have difficulties finding the
individuals with those skills that can get through our process
and overcome the security issues with having family members
that live abroad and so forth. That is an obstacle that is
difficult to get around.
Senator Coleman. Mr. Mihm, do you want to respond?
Mr. Mihm. Senator Coleman, I take Mark's point that
certainly for some specialized competencies, there are in a
sense absolute shortages; however, fundamentally, the issue is
making sure that we in the Federal Government have hiring and
recruiting processes that are agile enough to identify and
bring on the people that are out there. Commissioner Gorelick
spoke earlier about how the traditional model focused on having
people with the law enforcement background. It is a whole
different type of recruiting and hiring model when you are
going for the diversity of talent that we now need in the
Federal Government.
Senator Coleman. It may also be worth having a conversation
with other educational institutions in terms of what is being
taught so as to meet the need.
Mr. Mihm. Yes.
Senator Coleman. Let me have one, in the time I have, Mr.
Bullock, just one specific question for you. After the
Commission issued the report, the FBI agreed, I think with all
the Commission's recommendations about the operation save one--
I am not sure whether Mr. Fielding or Ms. Gorelick mentioned
it, but it had to do with an individual at each field office;
you have an official at the field office, a deputy level for
national security matters. ``Each field office should have an
official at field office of deputy level for national security
matters. This individual would have management oversight and
ensure that the national priorities are carried out.''
I believe the FBI response to the recommendation was they
promised to look at that closely.
Mr. Bullock. Yes.
Senator Coleman. Can you tell us where you are on that?
Mr. Bullock. We initially were to assign an Assistant
Special Agent in Charge in each office to address national
security matters. We would step back to look at that and to
figure out how you could effectively control the scope of
responsibility, because most of our effort is now in the
national security arena, and inculcate the intelligence
responsibility in that as well. So we are currently still
reviewing to see how we can assign these responsibilities at
the second level of command in each field office to deal with
intelligence and national security matters and the criminal
matters and the cyber matters.
Senator Coleman. That is very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. I would like to thank everyone for your
testimony. A big issue is the decision of where to put the
Director of Intelligence, in the White House or outside of it,
and then the other issue is whether or not that individual
should have a fixed term.
Mr. Mihm, you talked about the CFO, someone that would have
a contract and would be there in these agencies. I would like
your opinion on whether or not you think that individual that
would be the National Intelligence Director should have a term
that would carry into the next administration with some ability
that after 2 years, if there was a difference of opinion, that
they could be eliminated or ask to leave. A bad word. What is
your opinion on that?
Mr. Mihm. Mr. Chairman, as you know, the Controller General
couldn't be here today. I know he has some views on that, and
so I would like to be able to confer with him and give you his
considered position rather than offer something from myself,
because that really does get beyond my portfolio.
Senator Voinovich. OK. So at this stage, you would rather
not----
Mr. Mihm. I just need to----
Senator Voinovich. Let us put it in juxtaposition with the
CFO. You are talking about having a CFO that would have a
contract. So that CFO, say if you went that route, would be
there in the department with the intelligence director.
Mr. Mihm. Right.
Senator Voinovich. And if that individual would be there,
and that individual was termed out when the new President came
in, you would still have the CFO. That is the purpose of your
concept of the CFO?
Mr. Mihm. The chief operating officer. What has often been
added, is that, well, what happens if the new leadership,
political leadership team just can't get along with this
individual or this individual can't get along with the new
leadership team. If we are successful in getting the right
people to be COOs, these are the types of people who will have
options elsewhere and they will quickly see. If they are not
going to be able to integrate with the new political
leadership, then they will see the need to move on.
The idea here is just to provide some sort of mechanism
where we can have continuity and someone on a day-to-day basis
to worry about what are we going to look like as an
organization 5, 6, or 7 years out. It is just unrealistic to
expect that sort of time horizon consistently from political
leadership.
Senator Voinovich. At the FBI now, the director is limited
to 10 years, but there is no other limit at all in terms of the
director who serves at the pleasure of the attorney general.
Mr. Bullock. At the pleasure of the attorney general. So,
yes, we do operate under that system, and I think beyond that,
as Mr. Mihm stated, we do need the consistently at the CFO, COO
level. Beyond that, I would like too defer to the director to
decide on the--to provide his input on where the position
should be.
Senator Voinovich. Right. In the case of Mr. Tenet, he
worked for President Clinton and President Bush, continued his
service, but he had no term. That was at the pleasure of the
President.
Mr. Bullock. Right. Correct.
Senator Voinovich. It does show that if you get someone who
is competent, a succeeding President many times retained them
because they are top-notch people.
Mr. Bullock. Absolutely.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Coleman, do you have anything
further?
Senator Coleman. Nothing further, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thanks very much again for your
testimony.
Our next panel is composed of Dr. Paul Light, who is a
senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and Professor of
Public Policy at New York University. C. Morgan Kinghorn is the
President of the National Academy of Public Administration. Max
Stier is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the
Partnership for Public Service. And, finally, Doug Wagoner is
the Chairman of the Security Clearances Task Group of the
Information Technology Association of America.
And Mr. Wagoner, when you get to your testimony, in the
first minute of your testimony, would you explain the mission
of your organization?
Mr. Wagoner. Yes, sir. I do in my oral testimony.
Senator Voinovich. OK. Thank you.
Dr. Light, you have been with us before, and we appreciate
your presence.
Mr. Kinghorn, your predecessor worked very closely with us
in the beginning when we were drafting our human capital
reforms.
Max Stier is the head of an organization, the Partnership
for Public Service, that has been doing an outstanding job of
reaching out to try and get the best and brightest people to
come to work for the Federal Government.
So we are very happy to have you here today, and I would
ask you in your testimony, to comment on anything that you
heard from the other witnesses that you agree or disagree with,
I would appreciate hearing from you about it.
Dr. Light, we will start with you.
TESTIMONY OF PAUL C. LIGHT,\1\ PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, THE
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Mr. Light. It is a pleasure to be here. It is kind of like,
as Yogi Barra said, deja vu all over again. We have been here
repeatedly over the years talking about the management and
organizational problems at different departments, different
mistakes, events that prompted a flirtation with management
reform. It is sad to note that the 9/11 Commission had to
devote so much time in its report to our general difficulties
getting persistent and deep reform through the Federal
Government.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Light appears in the Appendix on
page 00.
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And I applaud this Subcommittee's work on this issue over
the years. This Committee as a whole has struggled to change
the management and organizational culture in the Federal
Government. We have got a real chance here to do some important
work, and I encourage this Subcommittee to be bold in attaching
to this legislation broader reforms that you believe are
necessary. This is a freight train that is leaving the station,
and sometimes you have to put governmentwide reform on what you
believe is essential, and I believe this is an opportunity to
do so as this Subcommittee has been successful in the past.
I am going to reserve most of my comments today for the
Presidential appointments process, which is just a disaster. It
makes absolutely no sense for us to create a new intelligence
directorate with six to twelve new Presidential Senate-
confirmed appointees if they have to wait 8, 10 to 12 months to
get on the job, which is a persistent problem in the Federal
Government more generally.
On September 11, less than half of the 166 jobs that would
be engaged in the War on Terrorism were filled with a sworn
Presidential appointee. That is a remarkable statistic. Two
months before September 11, the number hovered around a third.
You cannot direct a government to perform in response to threat
if the people aren't there. I have characterized this
facetiously too often as not a problem of headless government.
We had our secretaries. We had our deputy secretaries in place.
What we didn't have were the undersecretaries, the associate
undersecretaries, the assistant secretaries, the long list of
titles that were open for occupancy at the top of the Federal
Government and that transfer the directions down to the agency
front lines and that transfer the knowledge and information
back up.
We had what I call neckless government, and we had it for a
good long time. On average, the Bush Administration appointee
was in office 8\1/2\ months after inauguration. That is an
impossibly difficult figure. It is not the kind of appointments
process that speaks to an agile government. I worked on this
issue at the National Academy of Public Administration in 1984.
We pounded the shoe on the table about a 4\1/2\ month average.
We would give our eyeteeth for that average today.
I strongly encourage this Subcommittee to pursue the
Presidential Appointment Improvement Act, which the Chairman
has introduced which sits before the Committee. I strongly
encourage you to pursue meaningful reform and Senate rules
regarding the appointments process. We have got to eliminate
the use of holds as a device for making political points. I
understand that this occurs in both political parties. I
understand the dynamics underneath it, but we have got to take
action to assure that the Senate and the White House meet their
obligations to fill positions promptly.
I also believe that we have to seek a compact with the
Executive Branch to assure that appointments are handled in a
timely fashion. I mean, the process does not end with the
dumping of a nominee's package at the Senate door. Too often,
past administrations believed that was all their obligation
requires and then it is up to the Senate to discharge its
responsibility and wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have all
these positions subject to Senate confirmation. Well, I am an
Article One person. I believe that the Senate has an obligation
to review Presidential appointees, has an obligation to inspect
the records of Presidential appointees. that is part of your
constitutional obligation.
I do not agree with the 9/11 Commission's broad
recommendation that all positions under Executive Level Three
should be exempt from Senate review. That would mean that this
Committee would no longer have the right or responsibility to
look at Inspectors General, for example, to look at Assistant
Secretaries, for example, to look at Administrators and to look
at General Counsels, CFO, Chief Information Officers. You have
an obligation to look at positions that matter to this country
and to the government's performance.
So I argue in my testimony here that you should take a look
at each of the positions that could be exempted from Senate
review on a case-by-case basis and develop a reasonable
inventory of positions that could be dropped from the ordinary
review process. I also recommend that you undertake a
streamlining of the Presidential appointments process and
reduce the number of appointees subject not just to
confirmation, but actually put in place. We have too many
appointees. We have got too many layers of needless management
at the top of government. Again, it makes no sense to create a
national intelligence directorate if we are just adding new
layers to the Federal bureaucracy.
I applaud this Committee and Subcommittee's work. I
encourage you to be aggressive in your legislating, and I stand
ready to help you in any way that I can.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. Mr. Kinghorn.
TESTIMONY OF C. MORGAN KINGHORN,\1\ PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ACADEMY
OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Kinghorn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Carper, and
Senator Coleman.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Kinghorn appears in the Appendix
on page 00.
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As President of the National Academy of Public
Administration, an independent non-partisan organization
chartered by the Congress to give trusted advice to public
leaders, I really am pleased to be here to provide you with my
perspective on the recommendations for Federal personnel
reforming coming out of the 9/11 Commission. The views
presented today are my own and are not necessarily those of the
Academy as an institution.
The 9/11 Commission, as we heard this morning highlighted
several areas for personnel reform. I would like to focus my
comments on the issues of providing some additional
flexibilities to the FBI in its personnel practices. However, I
will also address certain other related 9/11 Commission
recommendations, and my testimony is organized around proposals
affecting the FBI, which were considered by a group convened by
the Academy in May of this year at the request of Congressman
Wolf, Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on
Commerce, Justice, and State.
Together, the group examined six proposals. Two of the six
are consistent with the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Four
were included in whole or in part in the Appropriation Bill
passed by the House on July 8. Two proposals would affect the
FBI, but also have implications for other Federal agencies in
general and should be considered probably in a broader context.
I want to offer some brief comments on each of the proposals.
The first is the establishment of an intelligence career
service at the FBI. This proposal would create intelligence
career service, including SES and other senior level positions
that may be beyond those permissible under the FBI's current
Title 5 authorities. Unlike the CIA and other intelligence
services that we heard this morning, the FBI does not have
authority to create non-supervisory SES and GS-15 positions for
intelligence personnel. This does limit their ability to offer
competitive pay and career advancement. The creation of these
positions would address the FBI's disadvantage when competing
for talent to staff its intelligence function.
Although the House appropriations bill did not address the
career intelligence service per se, and we believe it should be
addressed, it did authorize the FBI to pay critical
intelligence positions up to an executive schedule one as a
first start.
Second was creating an intelligence decision unit within
the FBI's budget. The current FBI budget does not have an
intelligence decision unit. The proposed budget structure has a
separate decision unit for intelligence, which we proposed.
Such a budget decision unit would propose a clear review of
funding devoted to intelligence and prevent those funds from
being reallocated for other purposes without congressional
notification. The proposal to create an intelligence decision
unit within the FBI's budget was included in the House
appropriations bill. Proposed legislation would collapse the
ten budget units used in previous years to four decision units
commented by the 9/11 Commission: Intelligence,
counterterrorism, counterintelligence, criminal and criminal
justice services.
The next proposal was to waive the mandatory retirement age
beyond 60. The director's current authority to waive the
mandatory retirement age at 57 is currently limited to age 60.
Mandatory retirement really is intended to promote a work force
consistent with the physical demands of law enforcement;
however, limiting the director's waiver to 60 denies the FBI
the continued services of really highly-skilled employees. The
House appropriations bill based on our analysis, again, would
extend the authority of the director to waive the mandatory
retirement age of agents, allowing him to delay mandatory
retirement on a case-by-case basis up to the age of 65.
The next item that was included in the bill was
establishing a reserve program within the FBI. As you all know
and we all know, in recent years, the FBI has faced a variety
of demanding situations that have stretched the organization's
personnel capacities. To better enable it to react quickly and
effectively to future crises, the FBI proposed creating a
reserve program. This program would allow the FBI to draw
quickly on a cadre of retired staff who are ready and able to
provide assistance. It would provide a streamlined process
thereby to tap a large group of retired staff with the targeted
skills to accomplish the agency's work on a temporary basis.
The precedent exists for such programs in the military and
other organizations and waivers are available for dual
compensation.
The House appropriations bill would authorize the director
to provide for the establishment and training of the FBI
reserve service that we believe would facilitate streamlined
temporary rehiring from a pre-certified cadre of retired FBI
employees.
Finally, the Academy's role in facilitating the review of
these proposals complemented our current and ongoing work on
the FBI's transformation, performed by a panel chaired by the
former Attorney General and NAPA fellow, Dick Thornburg. It has
two major components. First, the panel is reviewing the FBI's
efforts to structure its counterterrorism security and
intelligence components and to implement the programs it has
designed in each of these areas; and, second, the panel has
examined the FBI's field structure with a goal of developing
criteria that might be used to develop possible alternatives in
light of the changes in the FBI's strategic focus. We will
report out on this earlier next year.
In closing, I wish to emphasize that the Academy would be
pleased to assist the Subcommittee in its ongoing deliberations
regarding human capital recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
We have significant experience in a variety of agencies and
organizations, both at the strategic level in terms of
assessing where agencies should be going, as well as the very
practical ``on the ground, how do you implement it'' issues
that are really the expertise of our 550 fellows.
This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I would be
pleased to respond to any questions.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. Mr. Wagoner.
TESTIMONY OF DOUG WAGONER,\1\ CHAIRMAN, ITAA INTELLIGENCE/
SECURITY CLEARANCES TASK GROUP
Mr. Wagoner. Mr. Chairman, Members of Subcommittee, thank
you for inviting the Information Technology Association of
America to testify on current challenges industry faces in
obtaining security clearances in support of the 9/11
Commission's recommendations. The hearing is a positive step
forward in dealing with challenges that have plagued this
process for decades, a process that threatens national security
by failing to fill critical positions timely and keeps
qualified people from working in quality jobs.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wagoner with an attachment
appears in the Appendix on page 00.
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My name is Doug Wagoner, and I serve as a Chairman of the
ITAA Intelligence Committee. I am also vice president of a
small IT services company, and bring the perspective of small
business to this issue.
ITAA is one of the Nation's leading and oldest trade
associations focused on the IT industry, providing public
policy and national leadership to promote its growth. Our
members range from very large companies such as Lockheed Martin
down to very small companies such as me.
I have included in my full written statement a copy of a
detailed white paper that ITAA and seven other industry
associations have prepared after about 2 years of study that
provides five recommendations on how to improve this vastly
complicated process without sacrificing security. While the
pressures placed on an already stretched system have been
exacerbated by our government's response to 9/11, the
challenges we face have been the same for decades. Since 1981,
if not earlier, GAO has reported every couple of years our
government's inability to quickly and thoroughly clear----
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Wagoner, I know we are limiting it
to 5 minutes, but you can slow down.
Mr. Wagoner. OK. Sure.
GAO has estimated the annual cost to government and the
industry in the billions of dollars, and more worrisome is that
GAO and others have pointed to direct risks to national
security on critical projects due to a limited pool of cleared
people. Since 1981, the affected agencies involved have
proposed very few changes and have not been held accountable
for their lack of performance. Results of a recent ITAA survey
of our membership shows that industry has seen greater than a
12-month average time period for a new top secret clearance to
be granted with almost 70 percent saying that it takes over 9
months. This average is for a clean case where the individual
has no problems with foreign travel, credit, criminal, or drug
history. Clearances requiring more extensive investigation,
such as polygraph, are taking 16 months or more.
Senator Voinovich. Just so I am clear, these are entities
the government contracts with? You have people working for you
on classified projects, and before they can work, you have to
get a government clearance?
Mr. Wagoner. Yes, sir.
Senator Voinovich. And you are saying it is 9 to 12 months?
Mr. Wagoner. Exactly.
Senator Voinovich. OK.
Mr. Wagoner. And this is for a brand new top secret
clearance.
Nearly 22 percent of our respondents told us that their
companies have more than 500 open positions that require
clearance, and 70 percent said that they have seen a
significant increase in demand for cleared personnel from the
government over the past 5 years.
The 9/11 Commission has made among its recommendations to
reform the Intelligence Community several suggestions dealing
specifically with the security clearance problem. Today, I
would like to focus on four main points of our recommended
improvements, many of which mirror those of the Commission.
None of our recommendations water down the investigative
requirements or processes. Industry believes that we must
remain diligent to ensure that only those with a need to know
are granted the access to learn.
First, we recommend that agencies work through the
procurement process to authorize what we are calling bench
strength of cleared personnel. For example, if a contract
requires 20 cleared positions, we recommend that the
procurement official authorize 25 cleared positions so that
industry can quickly back-fill with a new person on that
contract. This will ensure critical programs to stay on
schedule and do not get bogged down due to clearance shortages.
Investigation standardization is an enormous issue for
industry. ITAA has identified more than 20 agencies with
distinct clearances across the Federal Government that require
unique items of inquiry for clearances at particular agencies.
Despite regulations and executive orders that spell out uniform
requirements, there is currently no mechanism to enforce such
standards. The Industrial Security Oversight Office has done
tremendous work in outlining standards all agencies should
follow, but they do not have the enforcement capability to
ensure compliance.
We agree with the Commission's recommendation to
standardize investigations and feel this must be addressed in
more detail in legislation. If there are to be new standards,
there must be a new mechanism to keep agencies accountable to
that standard. We applaud the Commission's call to consolidate
responsibility for clearances into a single entity, but we
believe that the role should be to coordinate and enforce
standard policies and programs across government rather than
actually conducting all the investigations for government.
We have concerns about the ability of a single organization
to handle the overwhelming volume of clearance investigations
that take place each year. OPM's experience has shown that
trying to absorb other agency's investigatory responsibilities
only increases delays. Furthermore, OPM does not have the
culture of meeting the demands of national security, and we
know the cultural shifts in large organizations will not occur
in time to meet our country's needs.
ITAA proposes that a new security clearance czar be
appointed with the National Security Council to both direct the
development of and enforcement of uniform standards, that
actual investigations continue to be carried out by agencies
requiring clearances. Having a single entity accountable will
help drive performance in a distributive process using the same
criteria and can hold agencies accountable.
On the issue of reciprocity, it would seem logical, Mr.
Chairman, that when one Federal agency grants a top secret
clearance, that clearance should be honored by any other
government agency to work at the same security level. More
often than not, this is not happening because of unique
requirements or, worse, a not-approved-here mentality. Ending
the multiple investigations of the same person would lower the
caseload and approval times. ITAA agrees wholeheartedly with
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that the intelligence
agencies accept each other clearances; however, we recommend
that this reciprocity, or what is called cross-over, be
mandated across all Federal agencies for similar clearance
levels and that the legislation specify that no Federal agency
will reinvestigate an individual who holds an active clearance
from another Federal agency.
Finally, high demand and low supply for cleared people are
causing an increase in job hopping which is rapidly raising
labor costs on government programs. Over half of ITAA's survey
respondents told us that they regularly pay 5 to 25 percent
more for a cleared employee who performs the same job as a non-
cleared employee. These increased salaries are most often
passed along to the Federal Government and unnecessarily drive
up costs.
ITAA would also recommend that a statutory performance
metric of 120 days be established in this legislation to
complete an initial top secret clearance. Ninety-six percent of
our survey said that they could better serve government and 85
percent could make the best and brightest people available to
government under this 120-day metric. Our experts believe that
with proper management, systems, and motivation put in place,
this can be accomplished within 2 years.
Industry values its partnership with government. ITAA hopes
to work collaboratively to improve the process that is critical
to national economic and personal security. Thank you for
invitation, and I would be happy to answer your questions.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Mr. Stier.
TESTIMONY OF MAX STIER,\1\ PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Stier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Coleman, and
Senator Carper. I very much appreciate the opportunity to
testify on such a critical subject.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Stier appears in the Appendix on
page 00.
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I had a little bit of a surprise this weekend. I was
expecting a baby 16 days from now, but he decided to arrive on
Saturday.
Senator Voinovich. Congratulations.
Mr. Stier. Thank you very much. And I must say that it is
undoubtedly true that anybody who has a newborn thinks very
much about the future. For me, the fact that my newborn came on
September 11 only heightens my concern about what we are doing
as a Nation to address these problems. I want to think very
much that we are at a crossroads about how we are addressing a
very new threat, and the work that you are doing here is to be
commended because it is so vital.
I think the Commission said it best when it said that the
quality of the people is more important than the quality of the
wiring diagrams. Unfortunately, it is much easier to focus
attention on wiring diagrams than people issues, primarily
because the people issues are much harder. They take more time.
They can't be resolved by a stroke of a pen, and they are
sometimes issues of judgment and of simply good management. I
think that many of the reforms that you are proposing or
considering in the legislation here will go a long ways to
improving the Federal Government's capacity to respond to this
threat, and I want to take a step back. In my written
testimony, I offer some support and information about a variety
of things that you are doing, but I think it is worthwhile
taking a step back and thinking more comprehensively about what
the challenges are that we face.
I would organize these, looking at the way the government
addresses talent issues, in three primary ways. The most
important is that I think the Federal Government today does not
address people issues as a management issue. They see it
primarily as a transactional question that Human Resources
professionals are going to take care of. That is a real
problem, and if there is one thing that we could do ultimately
to address the people question, I think that is the thing we
need to have happen, to have managers and leaders take
ownership of the talent in their organizations.
If you look at top private sector companies, the head of GE
recently said that he spends at least 30 days a year of his
personal time on trying to get and keep the very best people.
Tom Tierney, who turned around Bain Consulting, said that he
spent probably half his time on people issues. That is not
something that we see very much in the Federal environment. The
oversight of this Subcommittee, I think is going to be vital to
ensure that you get leaders in government to pay attention to
that critical asset.
I also think that the performance management standards that
you are considering having the National Intelligence Director
be responsible for will be important, and I think, very
importantly, the prospect of perhaps a chief human capital
officer who would be responsible for talent issues across the
Intelligence Community instead of under a single agency would
be very valuable.
The second area I think that is important to focus on is
the hiring process itself. Obviously, there has been a lot of
discussion, particularly of late, of the hiring process,
concerns that it is too slow and too difficult. That is all
true and something that we need to address, and I think that
whether it is security clearance issues or many other concerns
or, on the political side, the appointments process, those are
very important reforms.
It is also true, though, that the hiring process
comprehends a lot more than just the speed of hiring. For
example, we will be issuing a report shortly about the
assessment processes that the Federal Government uses in
determining who to hire. You need to hire fast, but if you
don't hire well, it doesn't matter how fast you hire, and that
is something that the Federal Government needs to focus on
quite extensively.
It is also true that we need to see more incentives for the
Intelligence Community and for the government at large to be
able to recruit the very best people. I know that, again, you
are considering a scholarship program, which I think could be
very important, and also, Senator Voinovich, you have proposed
governmentwide the GOFEDS legislation which would enhance the
student loan repayment authority the government has by making
it nontaxable, which I think would also go a long ways to
increasing the Federal Government's capacity to both recruit
and retain top talent.
The final piece that I would focus on is taking a look at
the way that government conceives of its own talent. The
historical model has been always that public service has been a
career, and while that is a wonderful notion and it is terrific
to have people who decide to come into government for their
entire career, the fact of the matter is that the talent pools
have changed and they no longer see themselves going to a
single job. They view their likelihood of being in many
different jobs. In fact, the average now is 3\1/2\ years for
any particular job.
We need to see the Federal Government change the way it
thinks about talent so that it becomes viewed as a career
builder and not only a career, and that is particularly true
when you look at the Federal Government's needs for mid-career
talent. Again, we issued a research report in the last month
that demonstrates that nearly 15 percent of GS-12 and above
jobs are being filled externally, and that has significant
consequences for some of the issues that the 9/11 Commission
report identified in terms of bringing in the kinds of skills
and talents that, frankly, you are only going to find if you
appeal to the whole range of talent markets, both internally
and externally.
It is also true that by creating the kinds of training and
development opportunities, again, that you are looking at in
this Subcommittee, you are going to be able to not only improve
your existing talent pool, but also become a more attractive
employer for those who are perhaps contemplating but not yet
deciding whether they want to enter into public service.
So with that, thank you for the opportunity to testify. Of
course, I am happy to answer questions, and any follow-up that
we can do at the Partnership for Public Service, we would be
very pleased to take on. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. I would like to thank all of
the witnesses.
Mr. Light, the Commission has made several recommendations
in terms of the Presidential appointments process. You
recommend removing positions below Executive Level Three from
the confirmation process, which doesn't have very much of a
chance of getting through this body. At what level would you
draw that line, or would you give the agencies the opportunity
to suggest where they don't think they need the approval?
Mr. Light. I believe that you can come up with a list of
level four and level five positions that could easily be
exempted without much agony by the Senate and the White House
working together. My view is that the Assistant Secretaries for
Public Affairs, no offense to the profession, that those
positions may not need Senate confirmation, but an Assistant
Secretary for Health at HHS or an Inspector General, I think
those positions are very important and ought to be subject to
review.
So I think it is just a function of actually laying the
positions--there are 500 or so of them--out on the table and
saying which ones of these can we streamline and which ones do
we need to subject to hearings. We also need to ask the
Executive Branch for some ideas on how to reduce the numbers
wherever possible. I think we have too many of them. The Senate
has agreed with that in the past, but I think you have to look
at each position on a case-by-case basis, and it is not such a
large number that you can't do it in a relatively short time.
Senator Voinovich. Well, part of the problem always is
getting agencies to come back and list the positions. We had a
little task force, a bipartisan group, and the legislation
failed because certain committees in the U.S. Senate didn't
want to give up the advise and consent role of certain
individuals. My thought was that we might have an opportunity
in creating this new agency. I would be interested in knowing
from you what criteria you would use in drawing that line in
terms of confirmation of the Senate.
What do you think of the recommendation of confirming all
national security nominees within 30 days of their submission?
Mr. Light. Well, I think it is a great recommendation. I
would settle for 45 or 60 days. I mean, you know the challenges
here, but I think that we ought to--we have been going the
opposite direction on asking the President to forward nominees.
So now we allow vacancies to be held by an acting official for
180 days. So we have upped that over the years, basically
saying, OK, you we can't get them up here in 6 months; at that
point we will enforce some sort of penalty. And on the Senate
side, we have sort of increased the level of delay as well.
I think we ought to say as a general rule that we want
these folks to be in office within 120 days of a vacancy. Now,
how you sort that out, if it is 30 days in the Senate or 60
days, how you do that between the Executive and the Senate, I
think you have to establish a benchmark and hold to it, and if
the position can be vacant for 180 days, don't we have a good
rationale at that point for abolishing the position because it
is irrelevant to have it in the first place? I mean, we could
spur a lot of action if we were to impose on ourselves that
kind of obligation.
Senator Voinovich. So you think we should strive for
looking at some level and then institute a 45-day limit on
nominations.
Mr. Light. I think Senator Baker and the other Senators
that we have talked to over the years in the Presidential
appointee initiative, their view is 45 days is a pretty
significant leap. I mean, set it wherever you can and push for
it and see if you can get some Senate rules changes on the hold
and see what you can do.
But I wouldn't restrict it, incidentally, just to national
security. It seems to me that we ought to set it as a benchmark
for all positions in the Federal Government.
Senator Voinovich. With the urgency and the crisis, we
might be able to at least make a first crack at it.
Mr. Light. Yes, hopefully.
Senator Voinovich. As you know, my legislation would
streamline the financial disclosure form for the Executive
Branch employees. It also requires that the Office of Personnel
Management provide a list of all appointed positions to the
major Presidential candidates 15 days after they receive their
party's nomination. I think you have already said that you
think that this legislation would help a great deal.
Mr. Light. I am absolutely convinced that you should move
ahead with that particular bill as an attachment. I don't see
any reason not to push for it at this particular point. The
National Intelligence Director is going to have to interact
with political appointees in all departments to do his or her
job. The Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of HHS, and so
forth, I do see the line here to restrict improvements in the
appointments process just to intelligence positions. I see no
reason not to attach your legislation to whatever emerges from
this Subcommittee.
Senator Voinovich. As you know, we were able to get
significant human capital reforms attached to Homeland
Security. We mentioned those to Mr. Bullock today.
Mr. Light. Correct.
Senator Voinovich. I am concerned that agencies are not
using those flexibilities.
Another issue that has come up in terms of the legislation
is the issue of the financial disclosure form.
Mr. Light. Right.
Senator Voinovich. Several of my colleagues want the
disclosure form to be changed for all the branches of
government. My legislation limits it to the disclosure form for
Executive Branch only. Would you like to comment on that?
Mr. Light. I share the general and worthy goal of extending
this to other positions, but it seems to me that the argument
is being made that everybody should remain in an appointee
Hades, shall we say, unless everybody gets out. I think we have
an opportunity here to do something. It is not the perfect
opportunity. I think we should move ahead and create the
precedent for action on the Judicial and Legislative Branches
at that time. I have long believed that particular objection
was not reasonably given our incremental progress in the past.
We just have to move forward where we can.
Senator Voinovich. So that the bill just deals with the
Executive Branch and, again, would be a forward step. You
recommend we consider Congressional disclosure separately?
Mr. Light. I say go, go, go on this. I mean, push it
forward as you can. It is an opportunity, and with all due
respect to your colleagues who raised these issues, I think you
just have to push where you can at this particular moment.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for your
work in this area.
I hope that 9/11 is a wake-up call. We were just going down
a path, like Mr. Light was saying, from 4 months at one point
in time to 8\1/2\ months now and just the difficulty level and
partisanship, political chips being used to put holds on
things, and, perhaps, the confluence of the events of 9/11 are
forcing us to say we have to move quicker with the work, Mr.
Chairman, that you have been doing.
I was going to ask the question that has been asked about
should we focus this on intelligence and should we do this
governmentwide, and I think the response is we take advantage
of this opportunity to make the system work. So I hope that
happens. I also just want to note how helpful this hearing has
been.
Mr. Light, you have talked a lot about folks on the outside
who are doing work, and then typically we are thinking about
within the government process, but in order for government to
function, we need to work with folks outside the system and
they have to go through the same processes, and if we don't
think about that and somehow clarify that, accelerate it, and
make it work better, we are all in big trouble, and the idea,
then, of government being not just a career but a career
builder, which really just reflects the nature of what I give
in speech after speech, that we don't train people for one job
anymore, we don't educate them for one job. That is an
expectation. Well, it should be an expectation in government
and not just outside government.
So this has been extraordinarily helpful.
We didn't talk much about the process of people, keeping
them in government. Maybe it is because there is an election
coming up, there is a lot of discussion about who is staying
and who is leaving. That whole process of can you incentivize
the process and encourage people to stay on, or is there just
something about burnout that is kind of a natural process?
Would anyone like to respond?
Mr. Kinghorn. Mr. Coleman, I would love to. As you know, I
worked in the Federal Government for 25 years and then became a
partner in a consulting firm where I ran a practice of about
600 consultants and 20 partners and faced the same issues from
a private sector standpoint. I think you have got to look at
the retention issues, as Max indicated, and we have done some
work on it very differently.
People are not going to stay, as I did, for 25 years in the
Federal Government, but I moved around a lot at the SES level.
That was one advantage I had. I think what you ought to do is
realize they are going to come and go and come back, and I
think your whole strategy and what is important about this
Subcommittee's work is you are beginning to look at this issue
and have looked at the CEO and the human resource issue as a
strategic management tool.
For as long as I was in government, human resources was,
really to me, seen as a business process and not particularly
well run, but we have used the budget for years, decades, as a
prioritizing tool. We used organization structure as a
prioritizing tool. And now you are looking at using the
strategic nature and the operational nature of human resource
management as a strategic tool, how do you provide incentives
for people to move up the food chain in the FBI, and you are
addressing that.
So I think that is part of the answer. I don't think it is
pay. I think pay is improving. I think we have got some ways to
go. I think it is basically creating an environment where
people can easily come and go and gain experience. For me to
come back into government now, someday which I would probably
love to do, it is going to be very difficult. It is still
difficult. So I think the old rule of how am I going to keep
Morgan Kinghorn here for 25 years in the same agency, people
are realizing that is not the right question. I think your
question is right, and I think the answer is different
incentives, different pay mechanisms.
The Academy doesn't speak uniformly on this issue, but I
have personally less concern that we have different human
resources practices and policies, because I think each agency
is different. I think we have to have the underlying Title 5
kinds of protections, because this is government, it is public
service; but if you want to set a priority, I don't see there
is too much wrong in setting a particular priority in a
particular program in the human resources arena. I think that
is what you are trying to deal with now.
Senator Coleman. Anybody else?
Mr. Stier. Thank you. And, Senator Coleman, my own view is
that the retention and recruitment issues are really two sides
of the same coin. I mean, ultimately who you need, what kind of
talent you need will depend on who you are able to keep, and so
that is important, obviously, to be thinking about. I think
systemically what you are doing on both sides and if you create
a work environment that is going to be attractive for existing
employees, that will also be a draw; and likewise, the flip
side, if you don't, you can sell all you want and sell very
well, but you are not going to get good people in.
The Partnership used data that was collected by the Office
of Personnel Management, a hundred thousand employee survey,
and put together a ``Best Places to Work'' ranking of Federal
agencies, 189 subcomponents. Across the board, the No. 1 issue
that was most important for employees in terms of their own
engagement in agencies was the quality of their managers and
leaders, and I would say that if you were to do one thing to
focus on retention, that would be to develop and train,
attract, and keep the very best managers.
And that is typically what you also see in the private
sector. People generally don't leave jobs. They leave managers,
and that is something that the Federal Government has truly not
focused on, hasn't invested in that management capacity, and
that is something I think would be of enormous benefit and
consequence.
Senator Coleman. Very good. Thank you, gentlemen. This has
been a very helpful and very informative panel.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Kinghorn, you have really studied
the FBI, you have seen the recommendations of the Commission,
and you heard the testimony of Mr. Bullock. Do you believe that
there is additional legislation needed at this time to deal
with the problems at the FBI?
Mr. Kinghorn. I think we will know more. I mean, the group
that the Academy is studying is really under the auspices of
Governor Thornburg, and some of that report will be completed
later this fall, and I am sure the governor would love to brief
the Subcommittee on that.
From what I know from a personal standpoint, I would concur
in the recommendations that we worked on with Congressman
Wolf's effort on the intelligence career service. I think that
is important. I think your concept, the concept that was raised
of a Chief Operating Officer, makes sense to me. I was in a
similar position to that back in EPA years ago when the
administrative functions, and the management functions, were
really much less complex. They are now very complex. There
tended to be some balkanization of management functions in the
government, the creation of CFOs, the CEOs, CIOs. I think that
is healthy because it has raised each of those organizations to
a point of importance organizationally.
But I think the concept of a CEO is important because
nearly every administrative function you bring up is a new
financial system, a new management system, and it is no longer
tied into just one of those functions. When I brought up two
financial systems at EPA and IRS, I could have done it myself
because it was viewed as a very narrow function. We were
successful. Now procurement is touched. Human Resources is
touched. Program management information is touched.
So the concept of a COO, Chief Operating Officer at the
department level even in bureaus or in this new intelligence
operation, I think makes sense to tie together short of the
Secretary, short of the head of the agency, those functions
because they do not interact particularly well. So that
concept, I think would be very helpful.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Wagoner, do you think that one
agency conducting security clearance investigations would make
sense?
Mr. Wagoner. No, sir, we do not for some of the reasons
that Mr. Turnicky had mentioned earlier. Each agency has
slightly higher priorities at any given time. We also believe
that distributing this across multiple agencies with the right
management processes, the right systems, and the right
oversight would make a much better decision, and that is why we
had recommended putting a national security czar at the
National Security Council to be able to look across government
and enforce these standards.
Senator Voinovich. Well, we have had some people looking at
that. I just checked how long it took my own two staff members
to get clearance from the State Department. It was 8 or 9
months.
Mr. Wagoner. Yes. It is just not getting any better. We are
encouraged about looking at--we had not considered having this
person report to the NID. One of reasons we did not make that
recommendation was we were concerned about the other
departments, primarily Defense, what their reaction would be in
having their clearances being done under the NID. That is the
only reason we did not make that recommendation.
Senator Voinovich. Well, if you had somebody working for
the NID that would be responsible for cracking the whip,
wouldn't that make sense?
Mr. Wagoner. Yes, sir.
Senator Voinovich. What do you think about setting a limit
in terms of time on some of these things and just forcing
people to get the job done?
Mr. Wagoner. That is our primary recommendation, and like I
said, we had studied this for 2 years on our panel. We had
folks that actually were in leading government security
clearance organizations, and again, with the right management
systems and motivation, it can be done in 120 days, and we
think it is time to codify that because this has been going on
since at least 1981 and just a lot of talking, a lot of
meetings, a lot of studying, but we just haven't seen any
changes to a process that was really invented in the Eisenhower
Administration.
Senator Voinovich. Max, you have been doing some studies
about what keeps people from coming into the Federal
Government. One of the reasons why the John F. Kennedy School
of Government made human capital one of their executive
sessions is the fact that so many of their people who had
ordinarily gone into government service decided to pursue other
opportunities. I would like you to comment on the issue of the
disclosure forms that one has to go through and the appointment
process. Also, in the intelligence area, is the long time that
one must wait before they are cleared impacting our ability to
attract the best and brightest to the government.
Mr. Stier. There is no question that all those issues that
you mentioned are related, and they reinforce a perception that
many talented Americans have about government, that is from our
research, the primary barrier for their being interested in
coming into public service, and that is seeing the government
as a bureaucracy, a place that they will get lost and a place
where their creativity and their individuality will not be able
to express itself and a place in which they themselves are not
going to be able to make a difference.
So, fundamentally, I think that what we see is a collection
of misperceptions and also realities that reinforce that view
of government, both of which need to be changed. The realities,
the ones that you have mentioned, disclosure forms, security
clearance processes that take very long, the appointments
process that means that leadership is not in place, all of
those reinforce objectively a view by talented Americans that
even if government is an interesting place to go, it is not
worth it because of the bureaucratic tangles they are going to
have to experience in either getting in or once they arrive.
So what is interesting about our research is that there, in
fact, is an enormous reservoir of goodwill towards Federal
workers. There is an enormous reservoir that cuts across both
party and ideological lines about the value of public servants,
but we need to move that into a cohort of talented people that
also want to be public servants, and the No. 1 perception and
reality we will have to change is that issue of, for lack of a
better term, bureaucracy, and that is something that I think
all the different recommendations that you have heard from this
panel and that you are examining yourself are going to be very
important in trying to change.
So in terms of accessing that external talent pool and,
likewise, in keeping the talent that you want inside
government, these kinds of reforms, I think, will make a very
big difference.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much. I really appreciate
all of you being here with us. We will see how responsive we
are to some of your good ideas.
Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:08 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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