INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY PERSONNEL STUDY OVERVIEW OF STAFFING ISSUES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00530R000200270006-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 30, 2013
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: July 5, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

/ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/06/06 : CIA-RDP90-00530R000200270006-0
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INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY PERSONNEL STUDY
OVERVIEW OF STAFFING ISSUES
Recruitment and Retention of Critical Skills
The Intelligence Community (IC) Agencies report that they
have been able to satisfy most of their critical skill
requirements (engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians and
linguists) despite a highly competitive market. CIA and NSA have
been especially successful and both have sophisticated and
effective recruiting mechanisms. DIA, FBI and the Military
Services hire fewer engineers, computer scientists and linguists,
but report greater recruitment difficulties. Also, DIA and many
service recruitment efforts are aimed at experienced,
full-performance professionals, whereas CIA and NSA concentrate
their efforts on recent college graduates at the entry level. CIA
and NSA attribute their recruiting success to three major reasons:
(1) their premium pay scales which make them competitive
with the private sector;
(2) a challenging and interesting work environment; and,
(3) good advancement and career opportunities.
Difficulties in filling engineering, S&T, computer science
and mathematics jobs experienced by some agencies (notably the
military services) result primarily from higher salaries and
better career opportunities elsewhere, including elsewhere in the
IC. CIA and NSA report having difficulty in hiring the highest
quality critical skill college graduates and top individuals with
advance degrees. The salary and benefits packages they are able
to offer simply cannot compete.
All agencies have problems recruiting linguists, due
primarily to the small pool of potential applicants. Requirements
for native or near-native language capability, especially in the
esoteric, Slavic, Far East, Near East and Mid East languages are
very hard to satisfy. FBI has difficulties recruiting agents with
bi-lingual capability, especially Spanish. Security requirements,
which make many foreign-born or native speaking linguists
ineligible for employment, compound the problem. One solution, as
advocated and practiced by NSA, is to hire individuals with an
aptitude for and interest in languages and train them in the
languages needed. Although it has proven successful, this is a
time-consuming and costly process.
The military services report that they are not able to
effectively compete with the private sector for ex-military
personnel with requisite knowledge and experience. Higher salary
offers and the dual compensation limitations on military retirees
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are the major problems. The services are becoming increasingly
concerned about the diminishing direct military experience among
their civilian workforce.
Most IC organizations experience continuing problems
recruiting and retaining secretaries/clerical and other such
support people, especially in the large metropolitan high-cost
areas. Higher salaries attract away many candidates, and many of
the best on-board employees leave for the same reason. High
turnover of support people in large urban areas is a fact of life,
however, and, special rates of pay notwithstanding, will likely
continue in the future. The problem is not as severe in areas of
smaller populations. NSA, for example, located near but not
directly in a major metropolitan area enjoys relative stability
among its clerical workforce.
NAPA Staff Views
Although the problem of hiring qualified and experienced
ex-military personnel is of growing concern to the military
services, the staff does not believe that there is sufficient
justification to seek exception from the dual compensation
limitations for the military intelligence organizations. Such
action would undoubtedly spur similar requests for exception
throughout the government. The services would be better served by
concentrating their efforts on the recruitment of ex-military who
are not retirees and to work to retain them by providing good
career opportunities and a good job environment.
Quality of Hires
CIA and NSA have been able to attract and hire at a quality
level which equals or exceeds any past hiring experience. DIA is
also satisfied with its overall quality, especially with its
intelligence specialists, but does have some difficulty with
respect to the engineering and S&T skills. The FBI is selective
in its hiring of agents, but also experiences problems in
attracting sufficient number of quality technical applicants.
The Military Services, have a great deal of difficulty
attracting engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians.
With the exception of AF jobs at Electronic Security Command (ESC)
and Foreign Technology Division (FTD), hiring is focused on
experienced, full performance candidates. Low salaries and
limited career potential find the services at a distinct
disadvantage when competing with the private sector and other
government agencies, including other IC agencies. ESC and FTD
fare somewhat better as they recruit at the entry level and their
postions are located in lower-cost of living areas.
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NAPA Staff Views
The staff believes that notwithstanding the overall high
quality of IC personnel, IC agencies are rarely able to compete
for the truly outstanding technical skills personnel. Whether it
be the top 10 percent of the graduates of the best engineering
schools in the country, a top PhD mathematician or other highly
skilled technical professional, salary and benefits that the IC
agencies are able to offer simply do not measure up. It is a rare
case when a top quality applicant decides that dedication to the
national security mission outweighs a fat pay check and generous
benefits.
Looking ahead, flexibility is the key. Assuming availability
of adequate applicant pools and the effective use of proven
employment screening processes, input of high quality hires should
be possible so long as the IC agencies continue to be given the
management flexibility to compete in the future job market.
Attrition
Attrition rates within the IC agencies are all well below the
national average for the private sector and the US government
average. CIA is 4.7 percent, NSA 5 percent, FBI 8.2 percent and
DIA 8.7 percent. Turnover of support personnel generally runs
considerably higher in all agencies, but this is typical of other
organizations, especially in the larger urban areas.
The military services intelligence agencies experience
somewhat higher attrition, but they have no specific data due to
their decentralized record keeping and reporting systems. Only
the military agencies emphasized that the staff they were losing
were among their quality staff. They believed they were losing
some of their best staff, many to other agencies in the IC.
While losses were not a large proportion of the total
workforce, any loss is costly, given initial recruitment and
processin The CIA estimates these figures to be in
excess of er hire. Also, mission is affected when
billets go unfilled for any length of time.
NAPA Staff Views
No organization likes to lose the staff they believe to be
among their best and brightest. Within the IC, there is the added
factor of the time it takes to recruit and the cost of security
clearances, so agencies want to retain their high quality people.
Considering the low attrition rates and the fact that only
the military services said they are losing their top staff, it
appears that this is not a major issue. Given the reported high
quality of the staff recruited, it may be that the agency-wide top
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quality eases some of the problems associated with losing
particularly effective staff.
Future Staffing Needs
All IC agencies see advancing technology as having
significant effect on their future workforces. More sophisticated
systems and greater complexity of skills will require finding and
hiring people who possess the requisite skills. Computer literacy
will be vital for many jobs.
NSA forecasts a need for people to possess a blend of skills,
rather than the single skill of most specialists of today. CIA
predicts that advancing technology will produce a need for more
engineers and engineer support personnel, as well as growth in
counterintelligence and arms control requirements. FBI foresees a
requirement for more foreign language qualified people, especially
special agents, due to the growing international aspects of
counterintelligence, international terrorism, and criminal and
legal attache programs. Technical advances in fingerprinting and
information processing will also require people with better skills.
The demographics of the future US workforce is also of
concern. The decline in the birthrate at the end of the "baby
boom" will result in fewer college graduates in the 1990's, hence
increased competition for the available talent. An increase in
the number of foreign born college graduates, especially in the
scientific and technical area, will likely further reduce the
shrinking pool of eligible candidates. More effective recruiting
mechanisms and incentives will have to be developed to meet this
future challenge.
Cooperation With the IC on Staffing
The view of the NAPA staff is that there is very little
cooperation or coordination exists on staffing matters within the
IC. The only formal mechanism in being is the Defense
Intelligence Special Career Automated System (DISCAS), which is
used primarily by DIA and to a lesser extent by the military
services. Each agency concentrates on meeting its own hiring
requirements, which vary from one agency to another. No attempt
is made to share employment information or to refer potential
candidates when a hiring requirement does not materialize. In
times of large hiring programs, there are likely few good
candidates to refer who are not given job offers, but in times of
litle or no growth, such referrals might prove very beneficial.
Also, the sharing of information on hiring techniques and
strategies, as well as the possible sharing of recruitment
resources might prove beneficial.
Impact of Changing Authorization Levels
Most agencies of the IC have experienced wide fluctuations in
authorized strengths over the past 20 years, and these
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fluctuations have affected mission accomplishment and workforce
structure. Only the military service intelligence organizations
have escaped these rather radical changes in authorized strength.
CIA, NSA and DIA experienced large personnel reductions in
the 1970s following the end of the war in Southeast Asia. This
resulted in serious loss of intelligence capability in many
areas. Cuts in DIA, for example, reduced them to one-deep in
analysts and completely eliminated any capability to generate
product on many areas of the world, notably the Third World
countries and Latin America.
The rapid and sizeable buildup in the IC agencies beginning
in 1981 and continuing through 1987 has had a great impact.
Agencies did not achieve the productivity authorized because of
the many vacancies which existed until the recruitment process
could catch up. Also, experienced staff had to be diverted from
operational missions to train the large numbers of new,
inexperienced employees being hired.
The workforce structure at NSA, in terms of age and length of
service, was greatly affected by these severe changes in
authorized strength. Today, because of the large hiring programs
in the 1980's, 40 percent of that agency's total strength have
under five years of service, and 50 percent are under age 35. At
the same time, 29 percent of NSA employees have over 20 years of
service and most of these will be eligible to retire within the
next 10 years. NSA will likely be faced with difficult management
problems as older workers leave the workforce and there is a dirth
of experienced middle and senior level managers and technicians
ready to take their place.
The staff notes that strength fluctuations are inevitably the
result of budget and political considerations and are often passed
along to IC agencies as "fair share" reductions, seemingly without
regard to their impact on national security priorities. If cuts
must be made for overriding political considerations, then the
Intelligence Committees of the Congress and the President must
realign priorities consistent with those adjustments.
NAPA Staff Conclusions and Recommendations
There is no doubt that the success in hiring critical skill
personnel enjoyed by CIA and NSA in recent years was made possible
by their management ability to remain competitive through
effective use of their authorities to set special salaries where
needed. Since DIA obtained similar special authorities in 1984,
their recruitment problems have eased. The military services have
also recently been granted like authorities, and the NAPA staff
recommend that Congress grant the same authorities to the FBI,
thus putting all the major members of the IC on equal terms as
regard their basic personnel authorities.
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The NAPA staff also recommend that all IC agencies be allowed
to freely use their special authorities to solve their respective
problems in meeting staffing goals. This will be especially
important if they are to be competitive in the expected difficult
future job market. A clear delineation should be made as to the
scope and extent of such authorities, and thereafter oversight
should concentrate on equitable application of pay and staffing
policy and practices with the Community.
The NAPA staff recommend that an IC Inter-Agency Working
Group be established to examine the feasibility of developing a
mechanism to share staffing and staffing related information and
resources. An applicant referral system, exchange of recruitment
strategies and ideas, and a possible sharing of staffing resources
could result. For example, focusing attention of the problems of
hiring linguists could well prove beneficial to all concerned.
Finally, the NAPA staff recommend that Congress be especially
sensitive to the impact on the IC Agencies of severe fluctuations
in authorized strengths. The inverted bell-shaped curve of NSA's
staff in terms of years of service and age places inordinate
pressure on that organization in developing the next generation of
managers and senior experts. If reductions in staff do occur as a
result of government-wide policies or if tasks continue to
increase while staffing remains level, then it is incumbent on the
Intelligence Committees to assist in reordering priorities.
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