[Senate Report 112-235]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
Calendar No. 540
112th Congress Report
2d Session SENATE 112-235
_______________________________________________________________________
INTERAGENCY PERSONNEL ROTATION
ACT OF 2011
__________
R E P O R T
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
to accompany
S. 1268
TO INCREASE THE EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE GOVERNMENT BY
PROVIDING FOR GREATER INTERAGENCY EXPERIENCE AMONG NATIONAL SECURITY
AND HOMELAND SECURITY PERSONNEL THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL
SECURITY AND HOMELAND SECURITY HUMAN CAPITAL STRATEGY AND INTERAGENCY
ROTATIONAL SERVICE BY EMPLOYEES, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
November 13, 2012.--Ordered to be printed
_____
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
29-010 WASHINGTON : 2012
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20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
JON TESTER, Montana RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MARK BEGICH, Alaska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Beth M. Grossman, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Gordon N. Lederman, Associate Staff Director and Chief Counsel
for National Security and Investigations
Christian J. Beckner, Associate Staff Director
for Homeland Security Prevention and Protection
Nicholas A. Rossi, Minority Staff Director
Mark B. LeDuc, Minority General Counsel
Eric B. Heighberger, Minority Professional Staff Member
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
Page
I. Purpose and Summary..............................................1
II. Background and Need for the Legislation..........................1
III. Legislative History.............................................23
IV. Section-by-Section Analysis.....................................24
V. Evaluation of Regulatory Impact.................................29
VI. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate.......................29
VII. Changes to Existing Law.........................................30
Calendar No. 540
112th Congress } { Report
SENATE
2d Session } { 112-235
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INTERAGENCY PERSONNEL ROTATION ACT OF 2011
_______
November 13, 2012.--Ordered to be printed
_______
Mr. Lieberman, from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, submitted the following
R E P O R T
[To accompany S. 1268]
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, to which was referred the bill (S. 1268) to increase
the efficiency and effectiveness of the Government by providing
for greater interagency experience among national security and
homeland security personnel through the development of a
national security and homeland security human capital strategy
and interagency rotational service by employees, and for other
purposes, having considered the same, reports favorably thereon
with an amendment in the nature of a substitute and recommends
that the bill do pass.
I. PURPOSE AND SUMMARY
One of the most important lessons learned from the tragedy
of September 11, 2001, is that government agencies tasked with
maintaining our national security--and the people working for
them--must continually strive to break down the bureaucratic
and cultural barriers that can keep them from working together
effectively and efficiently to achieve their common purpose of
protecting the United States and its people. The Interagency
Personnel Rotation Act of 2011 seeks to do just that, by
facilitating the ability of federal national and homeland
security workers to rotate through Executive Branch departments
and agencies other than their own, so that they can forge
relationships and better understand the workings of other
agencies and thereby promote a unified government effort in
this realm.
II. BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR THE LEGISLATION
Countering national and homeland security threats of the
21st Century effectively and efficiently requires the U.S.
government to integrate the capabilities and efforts of
multiple Executive Branch departments and agencies into a
single, unified approach. One important way to achieve this so-
called ``whole of government'' approach is to have government
personnel rotate through departments or agencies other than
their own and thereby develop a broader understanding of the
threats to national and homeland security and the government's
abilities to counter them. The Department of Defense (DoD) has
effectively used such rotations to overcome rivalry among the
Military Services and to foster ``jointness''--that is, a DoD-
wide rather than Service-specific perspective among military
officers. Rotations are also used commonly in the private
sector to develop corporate leaders. S. 1268 applies this
concept to departments and agencies across the Executive Branch
involved in national and homeland security by creating an
overall framework for rotations but providing substantial
discretion to the Executive Branch to implement the framework
in practice.
A. The need for interagency integration to meet 21st Century threats
Countering national and homeland security threats of the
21st Century effectively and efficiently requires seamlessly
integrating the capabilities and efforts from multiple
Executive Branch departments and agencies.\1\ The Obama
Administration recognized this imperative in its National
Security Strategy of 2010, which called for ``strengthening
national capacity'' through a ``whole-of-government approach''
and stated that ``to succeed, we must update, balance, and
integrate all of the tools of American power.''\2\ The
heightened need for interagency integration has been recognized
by various Congressional committees\3\ and current and former
senior national and homeland security officials.\4\
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\1\See Catherine Dale, Nina M. Serafino, and Pat Towell, Organizing
the U.S. Government for National Security: Overview of the Interagency
Reform Debates, CRS Report RL34455, December 16, 2008, available at
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34455.pdf.
\2\White House, National Security Strategy (2010).
\3\This Committee (and ultimately the whole Congress) recognized
the need to apply all instruments of national power in an integrated
manner to counter terrorism when it authored the Intelligence Reform
and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (P.L. 108-458, (2004)).
\4\See, e.g., General Peter Pace, USMC, Vice Chairman Joint Chiefs
of Staff, ``Extemporaneous Remarks as delivered to the Marine Corps
Association/ Naval Institute's Forum 2004,'' September 7, 2004,
available at http://www.jcs.mil/vice_chairman/speeches/
MCANavalInstitute FORUM2004.html; Catherine Dale, National Security
Professionals and Interagency Reform: Proposals, Recent Experience, and
Issues for Congress, CRS Report RL34565, September 26, 2011.
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The basic national and homeland security architecture of
the Executive Branch dates back to the National Security Act of
1947, which created the National Security Council (NSC), the
Director of Central Intelligence, and what eventually became
DoD.\5\ The NSC is composed primarily of cabinet secretaries
and is responsible for advising the President. Although the NSC
provided some level of coordination, the departments and
agencies engaged in national and homeland security confronted
20th Century threats with relative autonomy from each other. In
contrast, national and homeland security threats of the 21st
Century intertwine traditional security areas such as defense,
diplomacy, and intelligence to a far greater degree and thus
require greater integration among the relevant departments and
agencies. In addition, 21st Century threats involve areas that
previously were not within the national security community such
as energy, finance, economics, public health, and law
enforcement--plus the area of ``homeland security.'' In other
words, new agencies that were previously not at the ``national
security table''--such as the Departments of Treasury, Health
and Human Services, Energy, and Commerce--now have national and
homeland security functions. Moreover, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) did not exist prior to the tragic
attacks of September 11, 2001. Thus, integration is needed
between the traditional security departments and agencies and
these new participants.
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\5\The National Security Act of 1947, P.L. 80-253 (1947).
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The need for improved interagency integration is heightened
by five factors. First, nonstate actors such as terrorist
groups, proliferators, and organized crime are responsible for
an increasing number of critical national and homeland security
threats. These actors are aided in their operations by
globalization--including information technology,
transportation, and financial mechanisms. Most nonstate actors
do not operate within defined borders, field uniformed military
forces, or engage in traditional diplomacy. Countering nonstate
actors does not fit neatly into the bureaucratic boundaries
that have separated departments and agencies in the past.
Second, the stated intention of terrorists to use weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) against the United States leaves
little margin for government error. Of course, during the Cold
War the Soviet Union fielded nuclear weapons capable of
destroying the United States many times over, but the Soviet
Union was a more traditional, rational adversary whose actions
were restrained by the need for self-preservation. In contrast,
the 9/11 attacks illustrate the intention of adherents to
violent Islamist extremism to kill large numbers of Americans
on their home soil in suicide operations, and evidence acquired
since 9/11 has evinced al Qaeda's desire to acquire WMD. Any
ineffectiveness in interagency activities to prevent terrorists
from acquiring WMD can have devastating consequences.
Third, critical national and homeland security threats
cross the so-called ``foreign/domestic divide''--that is, the
divergence of legal authorities, internal regulatory
compliance, and culture between departments and agencies
focused on matters outside of U.S. borders versus within U.S.
borders. Departments and agencies on either side of the
``foreign/domestic divide'' must collaborate closely.
Fourth, critical national and homeland security threats
must be countered in ``Internet time''--such as to counter a
pandemic, interdict a WMD being smuggled across borders, or
respond to enemy propaganda within a news cycle.
And fifth, our government's constrained fiscal situation
leaves no room for inefficiency, even if the ultimate result of
interagency activity is effective.
Examples of critical national and homeland security threats
of the 21st Century that require significant interagency
integration include the following:
Counterterrorism. Countering terrorism requires
integration at two levels. At the tactical level, entities such
as the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice,
State, and Treasury as well as the Intelligence Community must
work closely together to identify operatives, find financiers
and logisticians, prevent attacks, and dismantle networks. At
the strategic level, departments and agencies must counter
terrorist ideology in order to prevent and roll-back its spread
and drain the wellsprings of terrorist operatives, supporters,
and finances.
Counterproliferation. Both state and nonstate
actors are engaged in proliferation and seek to acquire WMD.
Entities such as the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security,
Justice, State, and Treasury as well as the Intelligence
Community must work closely together to identify and protect
sources of WMD material, identify and engage with scientists
with relevant expertise, map networks of sellers, buyers, and
smugglers, and detect and interdict smuggling.
Counterinsurgency. Close civilian/military
coordination is necessary for finding and defeating insurgents
while protecting the larger population and providing the
economic, educational, and rule-of-law support necessary to
``win hearts and minds'' and turn the larger population against
the insurgency. The insurgency following the defeat of Saddam
Hussein's military during the Iraq War and the insurgency in
Afghanistan demonstrate the importance of stabilization and
reconstruction to ensuring the success of U.S. security
strategy. Accordingly, integration is necessary between DoD and
civilian departments and agencies involved in stabilization and
reconstruction--such as the Departments of Agriculture,
Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice.
Cybersecurity. Cyber threats have the potential to
disable U.S. military capabilities, harm U.S. critical
infrastructure, and burden the daily lives of U.S. citizens.
The U.S. response involves both DoD for military cybersecurity
and DHS for cybersecurity of civilian departments and agencies.
Coordination is critical between DoD and DHS for sharing of
information concerning new threats and defenses, and between
DHS and other civilian departments and agencies.
Emergency Management. Responding to a domestic
natural or man-made disaster requires integration of
capabilities from across the Executive Branch. For example,
this Committee has found that poor integration was a cause of
the federal government's inadequate response to Hurricane
Katrina in 2005.\6\ This need for integration is even more
significant in a domestic catastrophic event, which could
involve disaster conditions so great in magnitude that federal
coordination of resources and capabilities becomes an absolute
necessity. The foundational document governing the federal
government's response activities, called the National Response
Framework, includes 15 emergency support functions on a range
of activities vital to an effective coordinated response, such
as communications, logistics and public health, each with a
lead federal department and supporting departments and
agencies.\7\
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\6\Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared. 109th Cong., 2nd sess.,
S. Rept. 109-322 (2006).
\7\Department of Homeland Security, National Response Framework
(2008), available at http://www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/nrf/nrf-
core.pdf.
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Public Health. Even more than traditional
emergency management generally, preparedness for and response
to a natural or man-made epidemic would require close
integration among departments and agencies. A pandemic is not
confined to a single geographic area, and a particularly
contagious pathogen could spread quickly throughout the United
States and abroad due to airplane travel. The Department of
Health and Human Services would have to work closely with
departments such as DHS and DoD to ensure distribution of
vaccines and antidotes quickly while public order is
maintained, and the Department of State would need to
coordinate with foreign governments.\8\
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\8\See Homeland Security Presidential Directive 21, Public Health
and Medical Preparedness.
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B. The role of rotation programs in improving integration
Prominent U.S. corporations that face the challenge of
integration across their bureaucratic components often use
personnel rotations in order to foster cohesion and develop
future leaders. For example, General Electric implements
rotational programs for their experienced and entry-level
employees to promote seeing ``the bigger picture.''\9\
International rotations are required for senior-level promotion
at IBM.\10\ Edward Jones, which has been rated fifth in the
nation for best places to work, also has incorporated a
rotational program for entry-level employees, which seeks to
allow employees to ``network internally and develop a broad
knowledge of the firm's inner workings.''\11\
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\9\GE Careers, http://www.ge.com/careers/students/entry-level.html,
January 4, 2012.
\10\Interview with Margot Conrad, Partnership for Public Service,
November 18, 2011.
\11\Edward Jones Careers, http://careers.edwardjones.com/us/
students/Full-Time Opportunities/HeadquartersRotationalProgram/
index.html, January 27, 2012.
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The paradigmatic use of rotations to achieve greater
integration in government is the military joint duty system
mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols DoD Reorganization Act of
1986.\12\ Prior to that Act, DoD was dominated by strong
Military Services--the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines--with
weak coordinating mechanisms across them. A critical theme
identified by Congress was that officers in each Military
Service had little understanding of the other Services and
would approach issues not from the perspective of the corporate
DoD but rather from their individual Service's perspective.
There were no incentives for officers to think `jointly' and
every incentive for officers to prioritize their Service's
needs. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (composed of the heads of the
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, as well as the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff) had a staff supporting it--called
the Joint Staff--but that staff was not manned by the Military
Services' best and brightest officers. Indeed, duty outside of
one's Military Service was considered detrimental to an
officer's career, which led the Joint Staff to be populated by
lesser-quality officers.
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\12\For a general discussion of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, see
Gordon Lederman, Reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Goldwater-
Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (Greenwood,
1999), and James Locher III, Victory on the Potomac (Texas A&M
University Press, 2004).
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Ultimately, Congress concluded that DoD needed to be
reorganized. Congress decided that organization mattered and
that, while good people could overcome bad organization
temporarily, they could not do so consistently--nor should they
have to. This theme was echoed by the 9/11 Commission in its
2004 recommendations for government reorganization to counter
terrorism--namely, that government organization has a direct
impact on government performance, and that improved
organization is an essential ingredient for improving
performance.\13\
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\13\The 9/11 Commission Report, National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States, July 2004, available at http://
www.911commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf.
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Critically, the Goldwater-Nichols Act sought to change the
military's Service-specific culture and mentality over the long
term by creating incentives to motivate the best-and-brightest
officers to do a rotational tour outside of their Service. The
Act required officers to serve on joint duty--including on the
Joint Staff or a combatant commanders' staff--and to fulfill
certain educational requirements in order to be eligible for
promotion to general or admiral. In addition, officers could
not be penalized for serving on joint duty, as the promotion
rates for such officers were required to match the promotion
rates for officers who remained within their Services. The
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002
clarified that service to achieve eligibility for general or
admiral needed to be a ``full tour'' of duty in a joint duty
assignment and to achieve a joint designation.\14\
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\14\Dale, National Security Professionals and Interagency Reform,
September 26, 2011. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2007 established a four-tiered system of joint
qualification, with the purpose being ``to ensure a systematic,
progressive, career-long development of officers in joint matters and
to ensure that officers serving as general and flag officers have the
requisite experience and education to be highly proficient in joint
matters.'' Id., at 6.
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It is noteworthy that the Services were resistant to the
personnel provisions of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Even senior
military personnel who supported the need for significant
reorganization of DoD and favored the strengthening of the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the combatant
commanders opposed the personnel requirements.\15\ However,
Congress overcame that resistance and imposed the personnel
requirements on DoD.
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\15\Lederman, Reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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Twenty-five years after the enactment of Goldwater-Nichols,
that Act is seen as an unqualified success in improving DoD's
organizational functioning. Joint military operations have
vastly improved in their effectiveness. DoD's culture is widely
regarded as having changed from Service-specific to ``joint,''
with the Act's personnel requirements being the driving force
of this change. Air Force General Michael Hayden, who served as
Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy
Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, commented at one of his Senate
confirmation hearings, ``Now, I can tell you as a military
officer, one of the most powerful sentences of legislation I've
seen in my military career was that one sentence in Goldwater-
Nichols. It says: The promotion rates of officers on the joint
staff shall be equal to or greater than the promotion rates of
the officers on the military headquarters staff.''\16\ The
effects of the personnel requirements were not felt for over a
decade, as a new generation of officers developed and served in
joint assignments.\17\ The Joint Staff and combatant
commanders' staffs are now attracting the best and the
brightest due to the promotion requirement.\18\
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\16\Senate Committee on Armed Services, Intelligence Nominations
Hearing, April 21, 2005.
\17\See Peter Chiarelli, ``Beyond Goldwater-Nichols,'' Joint Forces
Quarterly (Autumn 1993), at __
\18\See Letter from former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff,
General Colin Powell USA (ret.), to then-Lieutenant Colonel General
Peter Chiarelli, cited in Peter Chiarelli, ``Beyond Goldwater-
Nichols,'' Joint Forces Quarterly (Autumn 1993), at 77 and n.25
(stating that the quality of officers assigned to the Joint Staff has
improved due to the Goldwater-Nichols Act); see also statement by
Lieutenant General Norman Ehlert USMC (ret.), cited in id. at 77 and
n.26 (``Many observers agree with [General Powell] and are convinced
that [the Goldwater-Nichols Act's personnel requirement] has improved
both the quality of the officers serving on the Joint Staff and their
work. General Ehlert has noted that: `[The Marine Corps] used to send
officers who were retiring to work on the Joint Staff--not since
Goldwater-Nichols. Now we send our sharpest folks and so the other
services.''') .
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The success of DoD's rotation program for military officers
inspired Congress to require a similar type of rotation program
for the Intelligence Community. As identified by the 9/11
Commission, the Intelligence Community has been composed of
disparate agencies and elements including the Central
Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office,
Defense Intelligence Agency, and intelligence offices in the
Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, State, and
Treasury. Congress enacted the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to implement the Commission's
key recommendations. Among other things, the Act created a
Director of National Intelligence to serve as the leader of the
Intelligence Community and to integrate the agencies and
elements of the Intelligence Community into a single
intelligence enterprise.
Congress recognized the need to change the culture of
Intelligence Community personnel to become less agency/element-
specific and more `joint.' Accordingly, the Intelligence Reform
and Terrorism Prevention Act mandated that the Director of
National Intelligence provide incentives for Intelligence
Community employees to serve on the staffs of `joint' bodies--
that is, Intelligence Community entities outside of the
traditional Intelligence Community agencies and elements
including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
and national intelligence centers such as the National
Counterterrorism Center.\19\ Also akin to the Goldwater-Nichols
Act, that Act required personnel who serve in such positions to
be promoted by their home departments or agencies at the same
rate as personnel who have not served in such positions.\20\
Finally, the Act required that the Director of National
Intelligence ``facilitate the rotation of personnel of the
intelligence community through various elements of the
intelligence community in the course of their careers in order
to facilitate the widest possible understanding by such
personnel of the variety of intelligence requirements, methods,
users, and capabilities.''\21\
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\19\Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, P.L. 108-458,
Section 1011.
\20\Id.
\21\Id.
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In response, the Director of National Intelligence launched
a program requiring intelligence professionals to serve a
rotational period within the other agencies and elements of the
Intelligence Community in order to qualify for senior-level
promotion.\22\ That program received Harvard University's 2008
Innovations in American Government Award.\23\ However, as
demonstrated by the military's rotation program, Congressional
vigilance and oversight will be essential to ensure the proper
implementation of the requirement, and once the requirement is
fully implemented it will take a decade or more for the
benefits of the rotation program to manifest as a new
generation of intelligence officers--who have done rotations--
reach senior-level intelligence positions.
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\22\Intelligence Community Directive Number 601, Office of the
Director of National Intelligence, available at http://www.dni.gov/
electronic_reading_room/ICD_601.pdf.
\23\Intelligence Community Joint Duty Program Highlighted, Press
Release, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, June 30,
2009, available at http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/
20090630_release.pdf.
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C. Government and nongovernmental support for creating a rotation
program to foster interagency integration for national and
homeland security missions
The notion of a rotational program across the Executive
Branch for national and homeland security missions has been
suggested or endorsed by governmental and nongovernmental
experts since at least 2001.
In 2001, the Congressionally-created U.S.
Commission on National Security/21st Century (called the
``Hart-Rudman Commission,'' after its chairmen, former Senators
Gary Hart and Warren Rudman) proposed the creation of an
interagency cadre called the National Security Service Corps in
order to develop leaders ``skilled at producing integrative
solutions to U.S. national security policy problems.'' The
Commission proposed that the program include rotational
assignments and professional education as prerequisites for
certain promotions.\24\
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\24\The United States Commission on National Security/ 21st Century
(``Hart-Rudman Commission''), Road Map for National Security:
Imperative for Change, Phase III Report, February 15, 2001, at xvi,
101-102. The Commission recommended that the program include a wide
range of departments and agencies such as Commerce, Defense, Energy,
Homeland Security, Justice, State, and Treasury but exclude the
military, the Intelligence Community, and the Foreign Service. The
Commission recommended that an interagency advisory group oversee and
establish guidelines for the rotations and education, while the
departments and agencies would have authority over their own personnel
and make promotion decisions. See also Dale, National Security
Professionals and Interagency Reform, September 26, 2011.
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In 2006, the Congressional-mandated DoD
Quadrennial Defense Review noted, ``Much as the Goldwater-
Nichols requirement that senior officers complete a joint duty
assignment has contributed to integrating the different
cultures of the Military [Services] into a more effective joint
force, the QDR recommends creating incentives for senior
Department and non-Department personnel to develop skills
suited to the integrated interagency environment.''\25\ The
report endorsed creation of ``an interagency cadre of senior
military and civilian professionals able to effectively
integrate and orchestrate the contributions of individual
government agencies on behalf of larger national security
interests.''\26\ The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review reiterated
DoD's support for improved cross-agency training, education,
and professional experience opportunities.\27\
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\25\Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report,
February 6, 2006, at 79, available at http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/
report/Report20060203.pdf.
\26\Id. See also Dale, National Security Professionals and
Interagency Reform, September 26, 2011.
\27\Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report
(February 2010), at 69. That report stated that improving DoD's
cooperation with other agencies is ``a central facet of statecraft.''
As the report stated, ``Finally, the Department of Defense will
continue to advocate for an improved interagency strategic planning
process that makes optimal use of all national instruments of
statecraft. The complexity of 21st century conflicts demands that the
U.S. government significantly improve interagency comprehensive
assessments, analysis, planning, and execution for whole-of-government
operations, including systems to monitor and evaluate those operations
in order to advance U.S. national interests. One solution is to
allocate additional resources across the government and fully implement
the National Security Professional (NSP) program to improve cross-
agency training, education, and professional experience opportunities.
This will help foster a common approach to strategic and operational
planning and implementation, improving prospects for success in future
contingencies. Id., at 71.
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In 2008, the Congressionally-created Commission on
the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism (called the
Graham/Talent Commission, after its chairmen, former Senators
Bob Graham and Jim Talent) recommended that the government
``build a national security workforce for the 21st Century''
including by ``establishing a program of education, training,
and joint duty with the goal of creating a culture of
interagency collaboration, flexibility, and innovation.''\28\
More specifically, the Commission stated that ``the President's
top national security officials should consider including
assignments in more than one department and agency as a
prerequisite for advancements to the National Security Council
or to department or agency leadership level.''\29\
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\28\World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention
of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism (December 2008), at 101-2.
\29\Id., at 103. The Commission went on to state, ``Greater
opportunity for education and training is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for creating an effective national security
workforce for the 21st Century. To foster true interagency
collaboration, national security officers from across the government
must have the experience of working closely with colleagues from other
agencies.'' Id.
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Also in 2010, the Department of State released its
first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review report.\30\
That report called for ``expanding interagency rotations'' for
State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) personnel.\31\ As the report stated, ``Our training
must focus more on how to engage and coordinate other agencies
as well as ensure their representatives are effectively
integrated into a Mission's Country Team. To foster these
skills, we will increase rotational assignments to and where
possible from other agencies at all levels in both State and
USAID.''\32\ The report also called for the criteria for
selection of Deputy Chiefs of Mission or Chiefs of Mission to
include ``how well candidates have worked with the interagency
or managed multi-agency missions in previous postings'' and
that ``service at other agencies, such as USAID,'' should be
considered in promotions to the Senior Foreign Service,
selection as Deputy Chief of Mission, and recommendations for
presidential appointment as Chief of Mission.''\33\
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\30\Leading Through Civilian Power: The First Quadrennial Diplomacy
and Development Review (2010).
\31\Id., at xvi.
\32\Id., at 174.
\33\Id., at 30.
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In keeping with these calls for creation of a rotation
program, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13434
on May 17, 2007, National Security Professional Development.
The stated purpose of the executive order was to enhance
national security by ``promot[ing] the education, training, and
experience of current and future professionals in national
security positions (security professionals)'' across the
Executive Branch.\34\ The executive order required that the
Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM),
``consistent with applicable merit-based hiring and advancement
principles, lead the establishment of a national security
professional development program . . . that provides for
interagency and intergovernmental assignments and fellowship
opportunities and provides for professional development
guidelines for career advancement.''\35\
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\34\Executive Order 13434 (May 17, 2007), Section 1.
\35\Id., Section 5.
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To design this program, the executive order created an
Executive Steering Committee chaired by the OPM Director and
including the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense,
Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and
Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, and
Homeland Security and also the Attorney General, the Director
of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB).\36\ In practice, the Executive
Steering Committee was led by the OMB Deputy Director for
Management rather than the OPM Director.\37\
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\36\Id., Section 3(b).
\37\Statement of Major General (ret.) William A. Navas, Jr.,
Hearing on National Security Reform: Implementing a National Security
Service Workforce, before the Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia (April
30, 2009), at 4.
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Pursuant to the executive order, a national strategy was
approved by President Bush and released in 2007.\38\ That
strategy discussed the importance of interagency rotations in
fostering interagency integration:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\38\White House, National Strategy for the Development of Security
Professionals (July 2007), available at http://humancapital.doe.gov/
resources/National-Strategy-for-the-Development-of-Security-
Professionals.pdf.
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Inter-office, interagency, and inter-governmental
assignments, fellowships, and exchanges, including
those with appropriate non-governmental organizations,
provide personnel with a wealth of information about
the capabilities, missions, procedures, and
requirements of their national security partners.
Further, they foster an improved awareness of the
missions and personnel in other offices, which helps to
break down cultural barriers and promote professional
relationships that have valuable practical applications
during national security missions. As personnel
increasingly learn to work together and synchronize
common missions, we will achieve unity of effort to
improve the Nation's overall national security-related
capabilities.
In order to achieve a more cohesive national security
system, the Federal Government will provide
opportunities for inter-governmental, interagency, and
inter-office assignments, fellowships, and exchanges,
including non-governmental organizations where
appropriate, in order to accomplish the following
objectives: (1) enable national security professionals
to understand the roles, responsibilities, and cultures
of other organizations and disciplines; (2) promote the
exchange of ideas and practices; (3) build trust and
familiarity among national security professionals with
differing perspectives; and (4) minimize obstacles to
coordination.\39\
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\39\Id., at 9.
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In 2008, the National Security Professional Development
Integration Office was created to coordinate and monitor
implementation of the program. DoD serves as the executive
agent for the office, meaning that it provides the funds for
its operation and the office space, but DoD does not direct the
office's operations because the office is serving an Executive
Branch-wide function and not a DoD-specific function.\40\
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\40\Statement of Major General Navas, at 5.
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Subsequently, 17 departments and agencies individually
developed criteria for identifying national security
professionals for inclusion in this program. In total, the 17
departments and agencies identified approximately 14,000
national security professional positions, with approximately
1,200 at the Senior Executive Service (SES) level and the rest
at the level of General Schedule Pay Scale (GS) 13 to 15.\41\
In addition, the OPM Director issued guidelines for departments
and agencies to develop regulations to make interagency
experience a requirement for selection to an SES position that
was identified as a national security professional
position.\42\ However, the departments and agencies did not
adopt such regulations to provide incentives for the best-and-
brightest among their personnel to rotate to another department
or agency. Interagency rotations did not occur under this
national security professional development program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\41\Id., at 5. These numbers excluded Intelligence Community
personnel, as intelligence personnel numbers were classified.
\42\Id.
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D. The Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 2011
The Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 2011 responds to
the imperative to improve interagency integration for 21st
Century national and homeland security missions. The Act
utilizes personnel rotations in order to improve interagency
integration, building on private-sector experience and
Congress's successful mandate of rotations for military
officers via the Goldwater-Nichols Act. The Act also responds
to the evidence that, despite the best intentions, the
Executive Branch has not been able to institute an organized
interagency personnel rotation program. Indeed, as the
Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act demonstrate--and as former Vice Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff General Pace recognized--the Executive
Branch often cannot effect internal reorganization by itself
and instead needs Congress to institute it via legislation and
drive it via aggressive oversight.
1. The Act uses interagency communities of interest as the
building blocks for rotations
Although the Committee looked to the Goldwater-Nichols Act
as a paradigm, it recognizes the significant differences
between a rotational program covering the Military Services and
a rotational program covering the myriad civilian Executive
Branch departments and agencies involved in national and
homeland security. The variegated nature of the civilian
personnel systems across these departments and agencies led the
Committee to develop a framework that provides significantly
more flexibility for the Executive Branch in implementation
than the Goldwater-Nichols Act did for the military. In
addition, rather than mandate a single rotational framework, S.
1268 incorporates the Committee's view that civilian
interagency personnel rotations should focus primarily on
improving interagency integration within the Executive Branch
against a particular threat or for a particular mission.
Accordingly, the fundamental building block of the Act is the
concept of a National Security Interagency Community of
Interest (ICI)--that is, the positions across multiple
departments and agencies that have significant responsibility
for the same substantive, functional, or regional subject area
related to national or homeland security that requires
interagency integration. The Act seeks to improve interagency
integration within an ICI in order to increase the
effectiveness and efficiency of the Executive Branch for that
particular national or homeland security mission.
The Committee on National Security Personnel
(discussed below) determines the ICI topics. Examples of ICIs
could include counterinsurgency, counterproliferation, and
counterterrorism.
Subject to guidelines and oversight from the
Committee on National Security Personnel, the head of each
department or agency identifies which positions in that
department or agency are within an ICI and then which positions
in that department or agency are open for receiving personnel
on rotation from other departments and agencies. The positions
are to be at the level of GS-11 to GS-15. The Committee expects
that most rotations will be at the more junior to mid-level of
that spectrum rather than more senior--essentially, the level
of personnel who have achieved a basic level of proficiency in
their department or agency's mission but who have many years of
public service remaining, and most likely not management-level
positions. Thus the rotational experience will pay dividends
for many years.
The Act limits the positions within an ICI to
positions that have ``significant responsibility'' for the
subject area of the ICI because many positions in departments
and agencies would likely have some connection, however
attenuated, to an ICI subject area. The Committee does not
intend that positions that have attenuated or little
responsibility for the subject area be included in an ICI.
For example, an ICI focused on
counterproliferation could include positions in, among other
offices, the Department of State's Bureau of International
Security and Nonproliferation, the Department of Homeland
Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and DoD's
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear,
Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs and the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency.
Personnel would rotate within the ICI related to
their expertise--that is, personnel with counterproliferation
expertise would rotate to positions in the counterproliferation
ICI, not to positions in other ICIs such as cybersecurity or
stabilization and reconstruction. Thus, the rotations would
build personal relationships, overall cohesion, and a sense of
interagency mission and strategy across that ICI, with the
effect of increasing that ICI's overall effectiveness and
efficiency.
2. Departments and agencies will not need additional
personnel to implement the rotations framework in
this Act
In crafting the bill, the Committee was particularly
cognizant of the significant constraints on the federal budget
and therefore designed a program that would operate at minimal
cost. The Committee made sure that the rotation of individuals
among agencies would not result in a need to hire any
additional personnel.\43\
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\43\In so structuring the bill, the Committee chose not to follow
the military rotation model, in which the Services have additional
personnel--a so-called ``float''--who are available for rotation or to
do the work of those rotated out of a particular position.
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Most importantly, as noted above, the essential building
blocks for the rotations framework under this Act are the ICIs,
with rotation of personnel occurring within an ICI. The
Committee envisions that rotations would occur either on one-
for-one basis or in a round-robin format. To use the example
cited above, an employee in the Department of State's Bureau of
International Security and Nonproliferation would rotate to a
position in DoD's Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs, while
an employee in that DoD office would rotate to a position in
the Bureau (a ``one-for-one'' rotation). Or, the State civil
servant would rotate to the DoD office, the DoD employee would
rotate to ICE, and an ICE employee would rotate to the Bureau
(a ``round-robin'' rotation). All of the personnel rotating
would have expertise in counterproliferation, and all the
positions would be within the counterproliferation ICI. Thus,
each department or agency would gain counterproliferation
personnel to compensate for counterproliferation personnel who
have left for a rotation.
Moreover, as noted above, the Act permits rotations for
employees between GS-11 and GS-15 levels, but the Committee
envisions that most rotations will involve employees at the
lower end to middle of this scale--essentially, employees who
have mastered the basic skills and competencies within their
departments and agencies but are not mid- or senior-level
managers. The Committee understands that it would be difficult
for a GS-15 manager in one department or agency to rotate to a
GS-15 managerial position in another department or agency and
perform adequately. However, the Committee envisions that most
of the rotations would involve employees performing so-called
``action officer'' rather than managerial responsibilities. At
that level as opposed to the managerial level, personnel on
rotation would be well-equipped to contribute to the mission of
the receiving department or agency and to prevent loss of
mission performance or the need for additional personnel from
other parts of the receiving department or agency to backfill
the employee who has left for a rotation.
Section 6(g) of the bill emphasizes the point: it requires
that the rotation framework be instituted in a manner that
ensures a reasonable equivalence of the number of personnel
rotating into and out of a department or agency within an ICI.
In addition, the subsection requires that the positions of
personnel on rotation be filled within a reasonable period of
time by incoming personnel on rotation or by other available
personnel.
Even if for some reason the position of an employee who is
on rotation cannot be filled or filled adequately by an
incoming employee on rotation, the bill's flexibility in
setting the minimum length of a rotation gives agencies the
ability to design rotations to have minimal effect on a
department or agency's performance. The Act contains a
qualitative rather than quantitative minimum for a rotation:
that the rotation must be of sufficient length to gain an
adequately detailed understanding and perspective of the
department or agency to which the employee is rotating. Thus,
if necessary, a rotation can be of a sufficiently brief period
of time that the impact on the employee's home department or
agency's mission will be limited.
3. The Act seeks to encourage rotations not only to other
departments or agencies but also to interagency
bodies
The Act seeks to encourage rotations not just among
departments and agencies generally--provided the positions are
within an ICI--but also to what the Act calls ``interagency
bodies.'' Section 5(c)(1) of the Act requires the Committee on
National Security Personnel to identify such interagency
bodies, which are (1) entities in the Executive Branch that are
``primarily involved in interagency activities'' relating to
national and homeland security, or (2) components of agencies
that are ``primarily involved in interagency activities''
related to national or homeland security and ``have a mission
distinct from the agency within which the component is
located.''
By analogy, the Goldwater-Nichols Act sought to remedy the
lack of a ``joint'' culture and perspective among military
officers and, in doing so, to provide incentives for the best-
and-brightest military officers to serve on the Joint Staff and
the staffs of the combatant commanders. Previously, service on
such staffs had been considered detrimental to an officer's
career, and thus the best-and-brightest officers would not
serve on them. Following the enactment of the Goldwater-Nichols
Act, the Joint Staff and staffs of combatant commanders were
transformed to be the tour of choice for ambitious
officers.\44\
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\44\Deputy Secretary of Defense John White, ``Meeting the Needs of
the Secretary of Defense,'' in The Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganization
Act: A Ten-Year Retrospective (National Defense University press,
1999), at 60-61 (``One of the most important contributions of
Goldwater-Nichols was to require joint assignments and inaugurate the
concept of the Joint Specialty Officer. Overnight, this enhances the
career value of joint assignments. As a result, the quality of officers
assigned to joint entities improved dramatically. Today, as a general
matter, the best officers don't avoid joint tours they fight for them.
I see evidence of this every day as I interact with officers on the
Joint Staff and in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense].'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Executive Branch has a small but growing architecture
of interagency bodies equivalent to the Joint Staff and
combatant commanders' staffs within DoD. Just as the Joint
Staff and combatant commanders' staffs are outside of the
Military Services and play a critical role in ensuring
integration across the Military Services, the Executive
Branch's growing architecture of interagency bodies plays a
critical role in ensuring interagency integration on a variety
of national and homeland security issues. The Committee
believes that it is essential that these interagency bodies be
staffed by the best-and-brightest of Executive Branch personnel
because of these bodies' criticality for interagency
effectiveness and efficiency. These bodies fall into two
structural categories, as listed in the Act.
First, there are interagency bodies that are not tied to
any particular department or agency and instead work directly
for the President on interagency issues. For example, the
National Security Staff (NSS) supports the work of the NSC in
assisting the President in national and homeland security
decisionmaking and coordinating among departments and agencies
on such issues. The NSS reports to the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs (the so-called
``National Security Advisor''). The NSS has relatively few
direct hires; the vast majority of NSS staffers are detailed
from departments and agencies for often one- to two-year
assignments. Another example is the National Counterterrorism
Center's Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning, created
by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004
at the 9/11 Commission's recommendation. The Act states that
the Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning is
responsible for planning ``counterterrorism activities,
integrating all instruments of national power, including
diplomatic, financial, military, intelligence, homeland
security, and law enforcement activities within and among
agencies.''\45\ The Act defines ``strategic operational
planning'' as including ``the mission, objectives to be
achieved, tasks to be performed, interagency coordination of
operational activities, and the assignment of roles and
responsibilities.''\46\ The National Counterterrorism Center is
housed administratively within the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence. However, for purposes of the strategic
operational planning function, the Director of the National
Counterterrorism Center reports directly to the President.\47\
(In contrast, the Director of the National Counterterrorism
Center reports directly to the Director of National
Intelligence for the Center's intelligence analysis function.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\45\Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004,
Section 1021.
\46\Id.
\47\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second, there are entities within departments and agencies
that serve interagency coordination functions separate from the
particular missions of their parent departments and agencies.
These entities are being created in order to improve
interagency integration at the tactical or operational level,
while the NSS focuses on interagency integration at the
strategic level. These entities are headed by an employee of
the department or agency in which the entity is housed
administratively, and the head of each entity reports to
superiors within that department or agency. The entities
usually seek staff from other departments and agencies involved
in the same mission area in order to bring knowledge and
understanding of other departments' and agencies' capabilities
and objectives, reach-back to those departments and agencies in
order to access information, and interagency credibility for
the entities' activities and products. Examples of these
entities include the Human Smuggling and Trafficking
Center;\48\ the Export Enforcement Coordination Center;\49\ the
Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications;\50\ the
National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center;\51\
and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).\52\
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\48\This Center was created by a Memorandum of Understanding in
July 2004 among the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State
and subsequently established in statute by the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004, Section 7202. The Center is responsible for
preparing strategic assessments, facilitating the sharing of
information, and coordinating selected initiatives concerning human
smuggling and trafficking across departments and agencies. The Center's
director is selected on a round-robin from the Departments of State,
Homeland Security, and Justice for a three-year term. The Center's
staff is drawn from a variety of departments and agencies. As the
charter that established the Center prior to the 2004 legislation
states, ``The principal determinant of the success of the Center will
be its ability to draw on and integrate the diverse experience and
perspectives of its full-time staff. With this in mind, it is critical
that key members of the community of interest provide well-qualified
personnel to the Center.'' http://www.state.gov/m/ds/hstcenter/
41444.htm.
\49\This Center was created by Executive Order 13558 in 2010. The
purpose of the Center is to serve as the primary forum for departments
and agencies (specifically, the Departments of Commerce, Defense,
Energy, Homeland Security, State, and Treasury and the Intelligence
Community) to share information and coordinate export control
investigations and to establish a government-wide statistical tracking
capability for such investigations. The Center is located in ICE with
DHS and is headed by an ICE employee designated by the Secretary of
Homeland Security. Pursuant to the executive order, the Center has a
deputy director from the Department of Commerce and a deputy director
from the Department of Justice, as well as a liaison from the
Intelligence Community.
\50\This Center was created by Executive Order 13584 in 2011. The
purpose of the Center is to ``coordinate, orient, and inform
Government-wide public communications activities directed at audiences
abroad and targeted against violent extremists and terrorist
organizations, especially al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents.''
The Center is located in the Department of State, and its director is
selected by the Secretary of State. Its staff includes personnel
detailed from DoD and the Intelligence Community.
\51\At the impetus of the NSS and Congress, DHS established this
center within DHS Customs and Border Protection in order to create a
``strategic interagency partnership'' for sharing information,
coordinating enforcement actions, and conducting investigations related
to intellectual property theft. http://www.iprcenter.gov/. The Center
is headed by a Customs and Border Protection agent and staffed by
personnel from a wide variety of departments and agencies--including
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Postal Service, and
investigative entities from DoD. The Center does not have a minimum
length of time for personnel from other departments and agencies to be
detailed to it, instead finding a way to utilize detailees however
brief or intermittent their detail is. Although intellectual property
rights would not appear to be a national or homeland security issue, a
recent investigative report by the Senate Committee on Armed Services
concluded that counterfeit parts, particularly electronic parts, ``all
too often end up in critical defense systems in the United States.''
This Center plays a role in preventing counterfeit parts from being
used in U.S. military equipment
\52\These teams are joint military-civilian counterinsurgency units
serving as the ``primary civil-military relations tool'' in the
Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. Robert Bebber, ``The Role of Provincial
Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Counterinsurgency Operations: Khost
Province, Afghanistan,'' in Small Wars Journal (November 10, 2008), at
3. They are designed to improve local security, build local governance,
and engage in reconstruction and development. PRTs are generally headed
by a military officer and include scores of military personnel along
with representatives from various civilian departments and agencies.
Id.
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A key element of ensuring that interagency bodies are
included in the rotations framework is determining which
official is responsible for applying the framework of this Act
to each interagency body. The Act therefore designates the
National Security Advisor to fulfill the responsibilities that
the head of a department or agency fulfills with respect to
that department or agency under this Act. The Act also
designates the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center
to fulfill that role for the Directorate of Strategic
Operational Planning. And the Act requires the Committee on
National Security Personnel to designate the federal official
responsible for each interagency body that it identifies. The
Committee on National Security Personnel should not designate
the head of the department or agency in which the interagency
body is located to be the responsible official; instead, the
Committee should designate the official with direct leadership
responsibility for the Center, most often the Center's
director, as the responsible federal official.
The Act requires that the federal official responsible for
applying the framework of this Act to the interagency body
select which positions in the interagency body are within a
particular ICI and also which positions are open for rotation.
The Committee presumes that many of the positions in these
bodies are staffed by personnel on detail, as opposed to a
permanent cadre, and thus will be designated as ICI positions
open for rotation. However, there may be certain positions at
an interagency body that do not fall within an ICI because the
positions' responsibilities are, for example, administrative in
nature. For example, the Executive Secretariat at the National
Security Staff plays a critical administrative role in workflow
and document management, but Executive Secretariat positions
would likely not fall within any ICI. The Act thus permits the
head of an interagency body to designate certain positions in
that interagency body to qualify as interagency rotational
service so that personnel serving on rotation in such positions
would receive the promotion benefits mandated by the Act (as
discussed below) and thus would attract highly qualified
Executive Branch personnel to them. So, for example, the
National Security Advisor could designate Executive Secretariat
positions to qualify for interagency rotational service even
though they are not within an ICI.
4. Limitations on interagency rotational service
As discussed above, the Act's overall objective is to
encourage the best-and-brightest personnel from a department
and agency to serve in another department or agency or an
interagency body. This objective is not fulfilled if such
personnel are able to serve in another part of their home
department or agency and have such service qualify as
interagency rotational service. By analogy, the Goldwater-
Nichols Act did not permit, for example, a naval officer who
specializes in surface warfare to serve a rotation within the
Navy related to submarine warfare and have that qualify as a
joint rotation.
Still, the Act recognizes that a department and agency may
face a continuing challenge in integrating its internal
components and may be utilizing rotations across its
bureaucratic components in order to do so. In addition, a
department or agency that houses an interagency body may face a
challenge in staffing that interagency body because its
personnel may believe that serving in a new entity will not be
rewarded. Accordingly, the Act permits the following:
During the first three years after an ICI is
identified, a rotation from one component of a department or
agency to another component of that same department or agency
(assuming both positions are in the same ICI) shall qualify as
interagency rotational service provided that the two components
are of sufficiently different functionality. The head of the
department or agency shall determine these components, subject
to the approval of the Committee on National Security
Personnel. For example, the Secretary of Homeland Security
could determine that DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement
and DHS's Customs and Border Protection are sufficiently
different in functionality so that a rotation from one to the
other constitutes interagency rotational service. (The
determination would be made by the Secretary of Homeland
Security, not by the head of one of the components involved.)
A rotation from a component of a department or
agency to an interagency body housed administratively in that
department or agency would qualify as an interagency rotational
service. However, there are certain entities that could
potentially qualify as an interagency body but are so large and
inextricably tied to the mission of the parent department or
agency that a rotation from the parent department or agency to
that entity should not qualify as interagency rotational
service. The Committee expects that the Committee on National
Security Personnel would ensure that the allowance for
rotations to interagency bodies by personnel of a department or
agency housing such bodies is used appropriately.
For example, this Committee has recognized that FBI Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) play a lead role in
counterterrorism investigations domestically and rely heavily
on personnel on rotation from other departments and
agencies.\53\ JTTFs might qualify as interagency bodies, and
this Act would encourage and facilitate personnel from other
departments and agencies to be assigned to JTTFs. However,
JTTFs are such a large and fundamental part of the FBI's
internal functioning that permitting service by FBI personnel
in them to qualify as a rotation under this Act would be
contrary to the Act's purpose. Accordingly, the Act specifies
that service by FBI personnel in JTTFs does not qualify as
interagency rotational service.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\53\Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and Senator Susan M. Collins, A
Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government's
Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack (Senate Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs, 2011), at 74-75.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Ensuring that personnel on rotation contribute to the
receiving department or agency's mission
The Committee considers that it is critical that personnel
serving on an interagency rotation contribute to the receiving
department or agency's mission. In other words, personnel on
rotation are distinctly not representatives of their home
departments or agencies, viewing policy or operational issues
from the perspective of their home departments or agencies and
seeking to protect or further their departments' or agencies'
interests.
A critical way to ensure that personnel on rotation do not
prioritize protecting their home departments or agencies is to
provide appropriate incentives via the personnel performance
appraisal system. Accordingly, the Act requires that personnel
serving on interagency rotations receive performance
evaluations based primarily on their contribution to the work
of the receiving department or agency or interagency body. The
Act does permit other factors specific to the home departments
or agencies to be considered, but the Committee expects that
such factors will generally be administrative matters such as
physical fitness or continuing education requirements--not how
well the personnel protected the home departments' or agencies'
interests during the rotations.
The Act specifies that officials at the home departments
and agencies conduct the evaluations, rather than the
supervisors of the personnel at the receiving departments and
agencies. The Committee's rationale is that many departments'
and agencies' personnel appraisal systems tend to be
idiosyncratic, each with its own subtle lexicon to convey
whether personnel are truly meritorious. Having performance
evaluations done by officials at the receiving departments and
agencies would likely put personnel on rotations at a
disadvantage for promotion in their home departments and
agencies because such officials would not know the appropriate
lexicon. However, the Act requires that the officials at the
home departments or agencies who are conducting the evaluations
rely on the input of the supervisors from the receiving
departments or agencies or interagency bodies. The Act also
requires that, in order to ensure that personnel doing
rotations are not disadvantaged, such evaluations are provided
the same weight for promotions and other rewards as evaluations
of personnel who have not performed rotations.
6. Incentives for the best-and-brightest personnel to
perform interagency rotational service
As Congress recognized in the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, incentives
are necessary to ensure that the best-and-brightest personnel
from departments and agencies perform interagency rotational
service. Incentives are particularly important given that
departments and agencies generally want to keep their best-and-
brightest personnel in-house, performing the work of the home
departments and agencies. This desire will likely be
exacerbated by the government's constrained fiscal situation.
Thus, an essential component of this Act is its incentives
for the best-and-brightest personnel to perform interagency
rotational service. To begin, the Act requires that personnel
who are performing rotational service are entitled to return to
their previous positions in their home departments or agencies
within a reasonable period of time after the end of the
rotational service. In this way, personnel can be assured that
they will not be penalized for leaving their positions for a
rotation.
Even more importantly, the Act provides personnel who have
done a rotation with an advantage for promotion to the Senior
Executive Service (SES) or its equivalent. As noted above, the
Goldwater-Nichols Act made promotion to general or admiral
contingent on a military officer having done a joint duty
rotation, and this requirement is credited with having caused a
tectonic shift toward jointness in the military's culture. The
Executive Branch or particular departments or agencies may on
their own institute such a requirement with respect to SES
promotions for civilian personnel. However, given the complex
and variegated nature of the civilian personnel systems across
the Executive Branch, the Act contains the following incentive
structure:
The Act requires that heads of departments and
agencies identify SES or equivalent positions in their
departments and agencies that are within ICIs.
The Act requires that personnel who have served on
a rotation receive a strong preference in the competition for
promotion to such positions.
In addition, the Act requires that, on October 1st
of each fiscal year, the heads of departments and agencies that
have ICI positions designate how many of their departments' or
agencies' SES or equivalent positions within the ICIs shall be
filled by personnel who have done a rotation. This requirement
begins for each ICI on October 1st of the second fiscal year
after the fiscal year in which the ICI is identified.
No later than thirty days after the end of each
fiscal year, the heads of the departments and agencies that
have failed to meet these targets shall submit reports to
Congress identifying the failure and indicating what remedial
actions have been or will be taken.
7. Administration and oversight of the rotational service
framework
As noted above, the Executive Branch has attempted to
create a rotational framework with the promulgation of EO
13434, but that effort did not produce results. A major reason
for EO 13434's inchoateness was the lack of an effective
oversight mechanism, which among other things would have
ensured that departments and agencies implemented EO 13434 in a
timely and consistent manner. Moreover, it is critical that
Congress be able to conduct oversight effectively of
implementation of this Act.
Accordingly, this Act establishes the Committee on National
Security Personnel to design and oversee implementation of the
framework created by this Act and thus to ensure that the
Executive Branch implements the Act in good faith, consistently
across departments and agencies, and in a timely manner. The
Committee has designed this framework so that implementing the
bill would not require the hiring of new staff either to design
or to oversee the rotational framework.
The OMB Director will chair the Committee on National
Security Personnel, which also will include the OPM Director
and the National Security Advisor. In consultation with the OPM
Director and the National Security Advisor, the OMB Director
will issue directives and establish standards for implementing
the Act. The Act does not specify all of the types of
directives and standards that will be required nor all of the
actions that the Committee will need to take, but it does offer
examples such as identifying the ICIs and ensuring that
rotations are accomplished in a manner (e.g., ``one-for-one''
or ``round-robin'') that prevents departments and agencies from
needing additional personnel or suffering a decline in mission
performance. The Act does specify that the Committee shall
validate the actions taken by departments and agencies to
implement its directives and standards.
Each member of the Committee on National Security Personnel
would bring particular expertise and capability to the
Committee. The OMB Director has responsibility for Executive
Branch-wide management issues, has preexisting authority to
issue directives and standards for departments and agencies,
and is confirmed by the Senate and thus serves as a primary
point of accountability to Congress for the implementation of
this Act. The National Security Advisor brings expertise in the
national and homeland security threats and missions that the
United States faces, which is particularly important for
identifying and terminating ICIs on a continuing basis and
identifying which departments and agencies play a role in each
ICI. The National Security Advisor's presence on the Committee
also serves to convey that--as with the Goldwater-Nichols Act
and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act--the
rotational framework instituted by this Act is a fundamental
element of U.S. national security power for the 21st Century.
The OPM Director brings human capital expertise, which is
essential given the complexity of a rotational program that
spans multiple departments and agencies, each with its own
human capital system.
Pursuant to the Act, the Committee on National Security
Personnel is assisted by a board composed of a designee at the
level of Executive Schedule level III selected by each of the
Secretaries of State, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice,
Treasury, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Commerce and
by the Director of National Intelligence. The Committee may add
designees of other heads of departments and agencies.
Similarly, EO 13434 created an Executive Steering Committee
comprised of representatives of departments and agencies.
However, the Act specifies that the designees be at the
Executive Schedule level III in order to (1) ensure senior
representation, (2) convey the importance of the rotational
framework for national and homeland security policy, and (3)
enable the board to make recommendations to the Committee
quickly. In addition, the Act specifies that the Committee is
to be advised by the Chief Human Capital Officers Council to
ensure that the departments' and agencies' lead officials for
human capital also are consulted.
The Committee on National Security Personnel will require
staff support to administer the rotational framework required
by this Act. However, this Act does not require the creation of
any new positions or the spending of any additional funds for
this purpose. As noted above, the Executive Branch created the
National Security Professional Development Integration Office
as the staff support for implementation of EO 13434, and this
office is housed in DoD for purely administrative reasons.
There is no statutory authorization for this office or its
funding, but the office is funded under DoD's Five-Year Defense
Program. This office serves an Executive Branch-wide function,
not a DoD-specific function. Given this office's Executive
Branch-wide function--and that this Act supplants EO 13434--the
Act transfers the office and its three Full-Time Equivalent
positions to OMB and OPM for them to utilize as staff support
for implementation of this Act. The Act contains specific
language, developed in consultation with the Congressional
Budget Office, to enable this offset even though the office
does not have a statutory authorization.
The Act specifies that DoD is prohibited from creating a
new office that would duplicate the aforementioned office's
functioning, although DoD may utilize its personnel to
administer implementation of the rotational framework required
under this Act for DoD specifically. Indeed, with respect to
staffing support in the departments and agencies, the Act
specifies that department and agency personnel who were already
designated to administer implementation of EO 13434 be
responsible for implementation of this Act. Accordingly, the
Committee does not expect that any new positions will need to
be created in order to implement this Act.
8. Initial implementation period
The Act requires that, during the first five years after
enactment, the Executive Branch establish two ICIs--domestic
emergency management, and stabilization and reconstruction. The
Act requires that twenty to twenty-five personnel from across
departments and agencies in each ICI perform interagency
rotational service each year during that five-year period. In
addition, the Act specifies that such rotations occur within a
metropolitan area, thus preventing inter-city relocation
expenses.
This Committee is aware that the National Security
Professional Development Integration Office is designing a
rotational program for domestic emergency management and that
the program is being structured to prevent any costs to
participating departments and agencies. The Committee intends
that the ICI and rotations mandated by the Act for domestic
emergency management encompass this program.
9. The quadrennial strategy requirement and the importance
of performance measures
The Act requires that the Committee on National Security
Personnel produce a quadrennial National Security Human Capital
Strategy to develop the personnel necessary for accomplishing
national security and homeland security objectives that require
interagency integration. The quadrennial nature of the strategy
is modeled on the quadrennial DoD, State Department, and DHS
strategies; in addition, a quadrennial requirement is
appropriate, as opposed to a shorter time span, given that
personnel systems are relatively static and require long
periods of time to change--e.g., to develop appropriate new
human capital policies, to attract personnel to new positions,
and to have those personnel serve in such positions. In
addition, the Act requires the Committee to draft an
implementation report two years after each strategy.
One potential critique of the Act is that it does not
sunset after a limited period of time--for example, three or
five years--and thus force Congress to assess its effectiveness
and determine whether to reauthorize it. This Committee is
sympathetic to the motivation behind this critique--namely,
that Congress should conduct vigorous and sustained oversight
concerning the Act's implementation and should not hesitate to
change or even revoke the Act should the framework prove
unworkable or counterproductive. However, a sunset itself would
be unworkable and counterproductive for the Act because a
critical element of the Act is instituting incentives--over the
long term--for the best-and-brightest personnel to perform
interagency rotational service.
If the Act is subject to a sunset, personnel would
understandably surmise that the ``strong preference'' for SES
selection would eventually be ignored or revoked by their home
departments and agencies; these personnel thus would be
dissuaded from performing interagency rotational service.
The effect of the Act's rotational framework on
interagency efficiency and effectiveness will not be felt until
successive waves of personnel serve on rotations, return to
their home departments and agencies with a broader perspective,
eventually achieve SES and GS-level managerial positions, and
use their leadership positions to enable whole-of-government
solutions to national and homeland security problems.
Indeed, as noted above, the Goldwater-Nichols
Act's personnel incentives to foster jointness across the
Military Services took one if not two decades to come to
fruition in terms of creating a new generation of military
officers who had a joint rather than Service-specific mindset.
Although a sunset is inappropriate, the Committee
emphasizes that performance measures are critical for ensuring
that the framework is implemented fully and delivers the
desired benefits over the long term. Accordingly, the Act
requires that the strategy and the implementation reports
include data on the following performance measures: (1) the
percentage of ICI positions available for interagency
rotational service that were actually filled; (2) the number of
personnel participating in interagency rotational service in
each department and agency and interagency body; (3) the length
of interagency rotational service; (4) reports by departments
and agencies if they failed to meet their targets for SES
promotion; (5) the training and education of personnel who
perform interagency rotational service; (6) the positions held
by employees who perform interagency rotational service after
completing such service; and (7) to the extent possible, an
evaluation of the utility of interagency rotational service in
improving interagency integration. The Committee also expects
that the strategy and implementation reports will include
additional performance measures that the Committee may identify
as the Act is implemented.
10. The importance of consultation with outside experts
The Committee recognizes the complexity involved in
creating an interagency rotational framework. Thus, the Act
directs the Committee on National Security Personnel to consult
with nongovernment organizations in designing and implementing
this legislation. For example, the Simons Center for the Study
of Interagency Cooperation, located at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, is a program of the non-profit Command and General
Staff College Foundation. The Simons Center's mission, which is
to increase the body of interagency knowledge and to facilitate
broader and more effective cooperation within the U.S.
government at the operational and tactical levels, equips it to
provide useful and practical advice and guidance on initiatives
designed to increase interagency efficiency and effectiveness.
III. LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, and Chairman of
the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the
Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia (OGM
Subcommittee) Akaka introduced S. 1268 on June 23, 2011. The
bill was read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs.
The bill's provisions benefited from, among other things,
the airing of the issues at an OGM Subcommittee hearing last
Congress (held on April 30, 2009), entitled ``National Security
Reform: Implementing a National Security Service Workforce.''
Witnesses included: Ms. Nancy Kichak, Associate Director,
Strategic Human Resource Policy, OPM; Major General William A.
Navas, Jr., USA, Retired, Executive Director, National Security
Professional Development Integration Office; Dr. Ronald P.
Sanders, Chief Human Capital Officer, Office of the Director of
National Intelligence; The Honorable Bob Graham, Chairman,
Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Proliferation and Terrorism; The Honorable Thomas R. Pickering,
former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and
Guiding Coalition Member, Project on National Security Reform;
Dr. James R. Thompson, Associate Professor and Head, Department
of Public Administration, University of Illinois-Chicago. At
the hearing, Ms. Kichak testified on national security
professional development and said the issue is of ``critical
importance to the Federal Government.'' Major General Navas
described the implementation of EO 13434 and spoke of the need
for ``interagency experience to see the big picture, connect
the dots, coordinate effectively, and act decisively.'' Mr.
Sanders provided an update on the implementation of the
Intelligence Community's Civilian Joint Duty Program and how it
can serve as a model for developing a national security
workforce. Senator Graham and Ambassador Pickering spoke highly
of interagency rotations and strongly advocated for their
implementation. Dr. Thompson referenced the 9/11 Commission's
conclusion that the 2001 terrorist attack was allowed to occur
in large part by a lack of interagency communication and
advocated for a joint duty program.
The Committee considered S. 1268 at a business meeting on
October 19, 2011. Senators Lieberman, Collins, and Akaka
offered a substitute amendment, which made minor and technical
changes to the bill. The Committee adopted a modification
(making minor and technical changes) offered by Senators
Lieberman, Collins, and Akaka to the substitute amendment, and
then adopted the modification and the substitute amendment,
both by a voice vote. The Senators present for both votes were
Lieberman, Akaka, Carper, McCaskill, Begich, Collins, Brown,
and Johnson.
Finally, the Committee ordered the bill, as amended,
favorably reported, again by a voice vote. The Senators present
were Lieberman, Akaka, Carper, Pryor, McCaskill, Begich,
Collins, Brown, and Johnson. Senator Johnson asked to be
recorded in opposition.
IV. SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS
Sec. 1. Short title
This section states that the bill's short title is the
Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 2011.
Sec. 2. Finding and purpose
This section states that 21st Century national security and
homeland security challenges require a whole-of-government
approach in order for the U.S. government to operate in the
most effective and efficient manner.
Sec. 3. Definitions
This section defines several terms used in the bill. The
term ``National Security Interagency Community of Interest''
(ICI) is defined in subsection 3(9) as positions in the
Executive Branch which as a group (1) are positions in multiple
agencies and (2) have significant responsibility for the same
substantive, functional, or regional subject area related to
national security or homeland security. (An ICI could be, for
example, cybersecurity, counterinsurgency, or
counterproliferation.)
Subsection 3(5) defines an ``ICI position'' as a position
that is identified by the head of an agency as a position in
that agency that has significant responsibility for an ICI and
is at or greater than GS-11 (or a comparable level of
responsibility to GS-11). Political appointees are excluded
from the definition.
In addition, subsection 3(8) defines ``Interagency
Rotational Service'' as service by an employee in an ICI
position that is (1) within an ICI in which the employee has
served, and (2) within either (a) an agency different from the
agency employing that employee or (b) in an interagency body
such as the NSS of the NSC or the Directorate of Strategic
Operational Planning of the National Counterterrorism Center.
(Interagency bodies are discussed in this section-by-section in
section 5 below.)
Sec. 4. Committee on National Security Personnel
This section establishes the Committee on National Security
Personnel (``Committee'') within the Executive Office of the
President. Pursuant to subsections 4(b)-(c), the Committee is
chaired by the OMB Director and includes the OPM Director and
the National Security Advisor. Subsection 4(d) directs the OMB
Director, in consultation with the other two members of the
Committee, to issue directives and standards for implementation
of this Act and to validate the actions taken by the
departments and agencies to implement them.
Subsection 4(e)(1) establishes a board to assist the
Committee. That subsection directs that the members shall
include one designee at Executive Schedule level III selected
by each of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense,
the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the
Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Energy, the
Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of
Commerce, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads
of other agencies with the Committee's concurrence. In
addition, subsection 4(e)(2) requires the Chief Human Capital
Officers Council to advise the Committee on technical human
capital issues.
Subsection 4(e)(3) requires that agency heads designate
officials within their agencies who are already responsible for
implementing EO 13434 (which concerns national security
professional development) to be responsible for implementing
this Act.
Finally, subsection 4(e)(4) transfers the functions and
funding of the National Security Professional Development
Integration Office, established to administer EO 13434, to OMB
and OPM to administer the implementation of this Act.
Sec. 5. National security interagency communities of interest
Subsection 5(a) requires the Committee to identify ICIs on
an ongoing basis. Pursuant to subsection 5(b), the heads of
agencies shall identify positions within their agencies that
are within each ICI and, among such positions, those positions
that are open to being filled by employees on rotation from
other agencies.
Subsection 5(c) also requires the Committee to identify
``interagency bodies.'' Pursuant to subsection 5(c)(1),
interagency bodies are entities whose primary mission is
focused on interagency activity. That subsection directs the
Committee to identify the NSC (meaning the NSS, which serves
the NSC, reports to the National Security Advisor, and is
located in the Executive Office of the President) as an
interagency body. That subsection also directs the Committee to
identify the National Counterterrorism Center's Directorate of
Strategic Operational Planning as an interagency body. (This
Directorate is responsible for developing interagency plans for
countering terrorism. The National Counterterrorism Center is
located within the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence; the Center's Director reports to the Director of
National Intelligence but reports to the President for purposes
of this Executive Branch-wide counterterrorism planning
activity.)
Subsection 5(c)(2) states that the heads of interagency
bodies may designate positions within their interagency bodies
that are ICI positions (e.g., NSS positions responsible for
counterterrorism could be positions within a counterterrorism
ICI). That subsection also states that the heads of interagency
bodies may designate other positions in their entities that
would not otherwise be ICI positions (e.g., a position in the
NSS Executive Secretariat) but for which service in them shall
be deemed to be interagency rotational service.
Sec. 6. Interagency community of interest rotational service
Subsection 6(b)(1) requires the Committee to provide for
employees serving in an ICI position to be assigned on a
rotational basis to another ICI position that is in another
agency or in an interagency body and within the same ICI as the
employee's original ICI position. Subsection 6(b)(2) provides
an exception--namely, that an employee may be assigned to an
ICI position in another covered agency or in an interagency
body that is not in the ICI of the employee's original position
if the employee has particular nongovernmental or other
expertise that is relevant to the assigned ICI position.
Pursuant to subsection 6(c), the head of an agency with
positions in an ICI determines which of those positions are
open for interagency rotational service.
Subsection 6(d) directs the Committee to determine the
minimum length of a rotation, which may vary by position.
However, this subsection requires that the period of rotational
service be sufficient for employees to gain an adequately
detailed understanding and perspective of the agencies or
interagency bodies to which they are rotating.
Subsection 6(e) states that interagency rotational service
shall be voluntary on the part of an employee unless the head
of an agency has preexisting authority to assign an employee
involuntarily.
Subsection 6(f) states that employees performing
interagency rotational service shall receive the same training
at the agency to which they are rotating as that agency
provides to its own new employees.
Subsection 6(g) contains a subsection designed to prevent
agencies from needing a ``personnel float'' (i.e., additional
personnel) in order to implement this legislation: This
subsection requires the Committee to ensure that employees are
rotating across agencies within an ICI in a manner that ensures
that the original positions of employees performing rotational
service are filled within a reasonable period by employees
rotating into the various agencies or by other available
employees. This subsection also notes that some positions of
personnel doing a rotation may not need to be filled if the
agency will not lose effectiveness or otherwise incur costs
from the employee's absence.
Subsection 6(h) requires that rotational positions be
filled by fair and open competition except for positions that
are otherwise exempt from fair and open competition. Subsection
6(i) also prevents the bill from altering current personnel
rights under other provisions of law; this subsection states
that an employee performing interagency rotational service
shall have the same rights that would be available to the
employee if the employee was detailed or assigned under another
provision of law (i.e., other than this legislation) from the
agency employing the employee to the receiving agency.
Subsection 6(j) requires the Committee to consult with
relevant organizations in formulating and implementing this
Act. The Act gives a non-inclusive list of such organizations,
specifying/The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee expects such organizations to include, among others,
the Simons Center for the Study of Interagency Cooperation at
the Command and General Staff College Foundation.
Subsection 6(l) states that employees performing
interagency rotational service shall receive performance
evaluations that are based primarily on their contribution to
the work of the agency in which they are serving their
rotations and to the functioning of the relevant ICI. Pursuant
to this subsection, officials of the employee's home agency
shall conduct such performance evaluations based on input from
the employee's supervisors during the rotation.
Subsection 6(k) authorizes the Secretary of Defense to
assign military officers to ICI positions. Also, subsection
6(m) section contains a specific provision for Foreign Service
Officers, stating that service in a rotation freezes ``time in
class,'' which means that a Foreign Service Officer's service
in an interagency rotation does not count against the maximum
time that such officer may serve at a particular grade or level
in the Foreign Service before having to be promoted or retire.
Finally, subsection 6(n) requires the Executive Branch to
submit to Congress annually a list of ICI positions and ICI
positions open for rotation with an explanation of the criteria
of selection.
Sec. 7. Selection of senior positions in an interagency community of
interest
Subsection 7(a) requires that there be a strong preference
for personnel who have done interagency rotational service to
be selected for SES positions within their home agency that are
within their ICI.
Subsection 7(b) states that, beginning the second fiscal
year after an ICI is identified by the Committee, and every
year thereafter, the head of each agency that has positions
within that ICI shall establish the minimum number of that
agency's senior positions in that ICI that shall be filled by
personnel who have performed interagency rotational service.
This subsection requires agency heads to submit that target
number to Congress at the beginning of the fiscal year and then
to report at the end of the fiscal year if that target number
has not been reached.
Subsection 7(c)(1) states that, for the first three fiscal
years after the Committee identifies an ICI, service in another
component of an employee's agency may count as interagency
rotational service (e.g., an employee of the Department of
Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement may do a
rotation to the Department of Homeland Security Customs and
Border Protection and have that count as interagency rotational
service), subject to the Committee's approval.
Finally, subsection 7(c)(2) states that, for the first
three fiscal years after the Committee identifies an ICI,
service by an employee of an agency or component of the
Intelligence Community pursuant to the Intelligence Community's
internal rotation program shall constitute interagency
rotational service.
Sec. 8. Implementation
Subsection 8(a) requires the Executive Branch to establish
at least two ICIs during the first four fiscal years after the
fiscal year of enactment: emergency management, and
stabilization and reconstruction. That subsection requires, for
each such fiscal year, between 20 and 25 personnel to perform
interagency rotational service for each of the two ICIs.
Pursuant to that subsection, the rotations for each such ICI
shall take place within a single metropolitan area.
Pursuant to subsection 8(b), for each such fiscal year, an
agency shall prioritize rotations under this legislation for
purposes of utilizing the funds that the agency already has
available for rotations generally.
Subsection 8(c) requires that the Committee submit a plan
to Congress within 270 days after enactment of the Act for the
establishment of these two ICIs.
Sec. 9. Strategy and performance evaluation
Subsection 9(a)(1) requires that, no later than the
beginning of the third fiscal year after the fiscal year of
enactment, and every four years thereafter, the Committee shall
issue a National Security Human Capital Strategy to develop the
personnel necessary for accomplishing national security and
homeland security objectives that require interagency
integration. Subsection 9(a)(2) requires the Committee to
consult annually with the majority and minority of relevant
Congressional committees and, as the Committee determines
appropriate, to solicit the views of other relevant entities.
Pursuant to subsection 9(a)(3), the strategy shall, among
other things: (1) provide for the implementation of this Act;
(2) identify best practices from ICIs already in operation; (3)
identify any additional ICIs to be identified by the Committee;
and (4) include a description of how the strategy incorporates
views and suggestions obtained through the consultations with
Congress.
In addition, subsection 9(a)(3) requires the strategy to
include the following performance measures over a multi-year
period: (1) the percentage of ICI positions available for
interagency rotational service that were actually filled; (2)
the number of personnel participating in interagency rotational
service in each agency and interagency body; (3) the length of
interagency rotational service; (4) reports by agencies if they
failed to meet their targets for SES promotion under section 7;
(5) the training and education of personnel who perform
interagency rotational service; (6) the positions held by
employees who perform interagency rotational service after
completing such service; and (7) to the extent possible, an
evaluation of the utility of interagency rotational service in
improving interagency integration.
Subsection 9(b) requires that, two years after each
strategy, the Committee shall issue a report that updates and
assesses the implementation of the strategy, including data on
the performance measures.
Finally, subsection 9(c) requires that the strategies and
reports be submitted to Congress.
Sec. 10. Report by GAO
No later than the end of the second fiscal year after the
fiscal year of enactment, GAO shall issue a report to Congress
concerning: (1) the extent to which rotations enabled the
employees performing such rotations to gain an adequately
detailed understanding of the agency or interagency body in
which the rotational service was performed; (2) the
effectiveness of the Committee in overseeing and managing the
rotational service under this Act; (3) the participation of
agencies in interagency rotational service; (4) the extent to
which employees were rewarded for performing interagency
rotational service; and (5) the extent to which or likelihood
that interagency rotational service improved or is projected to
improve interagency integration.
Sec. 11. Prohibition of printed reports
To limit costs, all strategies, reports, or other
submissions produced by the Committee be published
electronically rather than in hard-copy.
V. EVALUATION OF REGULATORY IMPACT
Pursuant to the requirements of paragraph 11(b)(1) of rule
XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the Committee has
considered the regulatory impact of this bill. S. 1268 would
have no regulatory impact. In addition, the bill contains no
intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the
Unfunded Mandate Reform Act and would not effect state, local,
and tribal governments.
VI. CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE COST ESTIMATE
December 22, 2011.
Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman,
Chairman, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S.
Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has
prepared the enclosed cost estimate for S. 1268, the
Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 2011.
If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be
pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Matthew
Pickford.
Sincerely,
Douglas W. Elmendorf.
Enclosure.
S. 1268--Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 2011
S. 1268 would establish a Committee on National Security
Personnel within the Executive Office of the President to
improve the integration of national security and homeland
security personnel. The committee would identify areas of
interest for interagency cooperation among agencies responsible
for national security and homeland security. CBO estimates that
implementing S. 1268 would cost less than $1 million annually
over the 2012-2016 period, assuming the availability of
appropriated funds. Those costs would be incurred to implement
new regulations, provide additional staff training, and to
cover additional administrative expenses. CBO estimates that
enacting the legislation would affect direct spending;
therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures would apply. Enacting the
bill would not affect revenues.
S. 1268 contains two provisions that would have an
insignificant effect on direct spending. The bill would rescind
certain funds previously appropriated to the Department of
Defense. In addition, S. 1268 would make it possible for a
small number of Foreign Service officers to retire one year
later than they would have otherwise. Postponing retirement
would initially reduce retirement costs. However, that initial
reduction would be largely offset in later years by a small
increase in retirement benefits because the affected Foreign
Service officers would have an additional year of service. CBO
estimates that both of those provisions would have an
insignificant net effect on direct spending over the next 10
years.
S. 1268 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector
mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and
would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal
governments.
The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are Matthew
Pickford and Jason Wheelock. This estimate was approved by
Theresa Gullo, Deputy Assistant Director for Budget Analysis.
VII. CHANGES TO EXISTING LAW
This legislation does not make any changes to existing law.