EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP95M00249R000801110025-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 25
• Content Type: MISC

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. While the large majority of NFAC production addresses consumer needs,
"nice to have" production and duplication do occur. This problem has been
avoided only where the NFAC'office, division, or branch maintains close enough
contact with users so that the intended user and the likely need are identified
when the study is initiated.
The principle of production relevance should be emphasized in production
management and in contemplated organizational changes.
2. Production management across NFAC offices has been almost non-existent
until recently, and the problem at the community level remains considerably
greater.
Coordination of production planning by P IFAC offices should be strengthened,
whether through the Production Board or some other mechanism that provides a
forum for the office directors. At the community level, an interagency production
board should be revitalized and provided with a small coordination and planning
staff.
3. A community-wide bibliography of finished intelligence products is needed, both
to serve the consumer by pointing out the existence of a study on a particular
subject, and to identify and thereby help to reduce unnecessary duplication.
The DCI should investigate the feasibility of developing a community-wide
bibliographic system.
4. Evaluation of finished intelligence is nearly absent both within NFAC and at
the community level. The effect of the Senior Review Panel to date has been quite
limited, in part because the Panel has become integral to NFAC's routine production
machinery.
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An in-house evaluative element should be established within NFAC,
while at the community level, the Senior Review Panel should be subordinated
directly to the DCI, and enabled to function as an independent evaluator of
interagency production and of the quality of single agency production on issues
that are particularly important or contentious.
5. Inordinate delays in the production of NIEs and IIMs, and uncertainty as to
their form and purpose, have seriously undermined their quality and responsiveness
although recent steps have begun to address these problems.
The Director of NFAC should continue current efforts to define the
nature and role of all interagency production; and greater guidance should be
provided to the NIOs in the production of estimates.
6. Although NIOs contribute significantly in several capacities, the potential
of the NIO system has never been realized, primarily because of confusion about
NIOs' purpose and functions.
The NIO system should be maintained and its effectiveness strengthened
by clearly defining the roles of the NIOs.
7. NFAC has not taken on such community-wide responsibilities as monitoring -
or at least being able to identify - the allocation of analytic resources devoted
to a given subject by all elements of the intelligence community.
The DCI must consider reestablishing an element at the community level which
is cognizant of and capable of dealing with community-wide analytic resource issues.
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V. Conclusions and Recommendations
Conclusions about the management of intelligence production by the National
Foreign Assessment Center must take into account the significant variation from
one office to another. Generalizations tend also to be undermined by changes over
time - turnover among senior personnel within the offices or in the NIO system,
changes in the configuration of a given office or branch, and changes in the
leadership of NFAC itself. Acknowledging these variations, the Subcommittee staff
offers the following observations:
1. The staff finds that while the large majority of NFAC intelligence production
is relevant as it relates to consumer needs, there is still the never-ending problem
of studies which fall in the "nice to have" category. Others might describe these
studies as "necessary redundancy" and/or "useful duplication." The staff is of the
view while there is a need for competing analyses on major issues of user interest,
it notes as stated in the Classified Annex to the Fiscal 80 Budget Authorization
Bill (HR 3821) that the community needs to decide what areas require competing
analyses and which do not.
As the discussion in Section III indicates, the staff found that a high
percentage of NFAC studies are initiated within NFAC. For many of the products
initiated in this way, the staff was unable to identify a relevant user community,
or in some cases found that the product did not meet the needs of the intended
consumer. Finding, for example, that nearly all of the studies produced by OWI
and an almost equally high proportion of those produced by OSI to be self-generated
suggested to the staff that-some may have been undertaken independently of any
perceived need, or might duplicate other analyses. With so much self-generated
intelligence production in the two offices and.in some cases on similar issues,
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economies might be obtained by concentrating on those issues that require and
demand competitive analyses, and that the resources of both offices concentrate
on those critical issues as opposed to tackling those "nice to have" areas, for
which there may be a limited consumer public.
The staff also finds that self-initiation is not necessarily all bad,
finding examples throughout NFAC, and notably in OER, of studies undertaken with
keen awareness of actual or anticipated user needs. The essential distinction
between strong and weak production management is whether the production element
(office, division, or branch) maintains close enough contact with users so that
the intended user and the likely need are identified when the study is initiated.
For example, the staff found that among the nine OER products it examined closely,
there was one which was inadequately framed to address the current policy questions,
and attributed this to the absence of contact between the principal State Department
consumers on this issue and the OER analysts. There is no magic number, therefore,
to describe the desirable proportion of self-initiated production. The ultimate
criterion must be the value of each product in meeting identifiable user needs.
Recommendation: The principle of production relevance should direct all
day-to-day production management, and should guide any contemplated change in NFAC
organization. For example, contact between analysts and consumers should be
encouraged, and both the NIOs and Office Directors should be recognized to play
a major role in this regard.
2. Together with meaningful user-producer contact, the key to allocating
available resources so that finished intelligence is relevant to consumer needs
and so that there are no major gaps in coverage, is production planning and
coordination. The staff found that until the middle of 1979 production management
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across NFAC offices was almost non-existent, and the problem at the community level
considerably greater.
It was only with the appointment of the Executive Secretary of the NFAC
Production Board last spring that production planning was given impetus. Its
major achievement to date has been the development of a schedule for NIEs and IIMs
which provides for the status of a study to be identified, a yearly coordinated
production cycle for these papers, as well as a set of guidelines for the production
of interagency papers. Continued efforts to strengthen coordination of production
planning across NFAC offices, whether achieved through the Production Borad or some
other mechanism, are clearly necessary to avoid inadvertent duplication among NFAC
offices and to strengthen the interdisciplinary dimension of the studies.
At the community level, the staff notes the absence of production planning.
An Interagency Production Board ostensibly was created by the DCI but the staff
has been unable to discern if it ever functioned. In the course of its limited
investigation it found several examples of NFAC studies which addressed subjects
which appeared to have been covered recently by other community production elements
and for which "competitive analysis" would not seem to be warranted. At present
there is no element at the intelligence community level whose responsibility it is
to even note the existence of such apparent duplication.
Recommendation: Coordination of Production planning by NFAC offices should
be strengthened, whether through the Production Board or some other mechanism that
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provides a forum for the office directors. Whatever the mechanism, a small and
active staff should be provided to stimulate the necessary coordination. The staff
notes that such coordination is facilitated by ensuring that all NFAC offices condu t
their production planning on the same cycle. While the staff believes that each
agency ought to be responsive to its particular set of users it does find that in
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an era of diminishing resources that agencies and/or organizations, to include
not only NFAC but elements within the Department of Defense, ought to be more
selective on what issues they choose to publish. For this reason, it believes
that the concept of an Interagency Production Board ought to be revitalized.
Such a Board should be provided with a small coordination and planning staff
reporting directly to the DCI. Through such a mechanism, a community-wide
production planning cycle could be established. Such a community-wide coordination,
however, must not undermine the authority of each agency to establish its own
priorities. Its purpose should be informational, both to serve the consumer by
pointing out the existence of a study dealing with a particular subject, and to
identify unnecessary duplication where it occurs.
3. Associated with the need to improve production planning is the requirement
to inform intelligence users of what is available. As noted by the Office of !2-..
Management and Budget in a report (May 1978) on intelligence consumer attitudes, (?c
there is a need for a community-wide bibliography of finished intelligence products.
At present to identify what has been produced on a particular subject requires a
bevy of publications, both finished as in the case of DIA's Monthly Production
Summaries, as well as raw computer runs. None of these bibliographies are compatible;
some are automated and others are not. The data fields are often different, so it
is impossible to perform any type of research to identify what particular studies
were done during a six-month period on some topic, or which studies may have been
disseminated at a particular classification level. This bibliography, while beneficial
to the user, would probably also be of great value to members of the intelligence
community in that they would have an up-to-date and complete list of all finished
intelligence studies from all producers. The staff believes that if such a list
were developed, established and maintained on a community-wide basis that it might
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eventually lead to a reduction in the so-called "nice to have" studies.
Recommendation: The DCI should investigate the feasibility of developing
a community-wide bibliographic system.
4. The staff notes the absence of finished intelligence evaluation, both
within NFAC and at the community level. In a report to the Congress in 1978 the
DCI announced that "a full-time review panel of about 5 nationally recognized
authorities will be created to review and critique important national intelligence
products." By the end of of 1978, when the Charter for the Senior Review Panel
was written, the concept had evolved from that of evaluation to a broader role, in
which the panel was expected to assist in the planning of intelligence production
and the allocation of analytic resources in NFAC. During the first six months of
operation, the panel, whose members had been carefully selected, applied itself
seriously to observing the NIE process and improving the quality of NIEs currently
underway. However, through interviews with the members of the panel, and with
other intelligence personnel, the staff has concluded that the effect of the
Senior Review Panel to date has been quite limited. It has not as yet attempted
to evaluate single agency production other than NIEs and IIMs, nor has it conducted
post mortems. More importantly, the staff finds that the panel has become integral
to the routine machinery, seriously inhibiting its ability to set its own agenda
for evaluation, and to maintain the independence necessary to perform that function.
Recommendation: The Senior Review Panel should be subordinated directly
to the Director of Central Intelligence and its charter should be reexamined.
Its role should be clearly that of an independent evaluator, rather than an
integral part of the production machinery. Independence from CIA should be main-
tained in order to underline the panel's objectivity on interagency issues. Its
purpose should be to evaluate significant national intelligence, to include not
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only NIEs and IIMs, but the performance of the intelligence community on selected
issues of major importance. Thus, it should from time to time undertake postmortems,
and should examine the quality of single agency production on issues that are
particularly important or contentious.
No external critiques can substitute for in-house evaluation; an evaluative
element should be provided within NFAC to examine the utility of the present
reporting and also to try to identify any gaps in analytic coverage.
5. The staff has found significant difficulties in NIE production, which are
discussed in Section V. These have included inordinate delays in NIE production,
some of which threaten the integrity of the product, subjecting it to actual or
apparent manipulation by interested parties. Delays associated with interagency
production make it unresponsive to users' needs. In addition there has been
considerable uncertainty as to the form and purpose of NIEs and IIMs, with much
unevenness in their format and quality and the degree to which they attempt estima-
tive judgments. The staff has also observed that several steps have been taken in
recent months to address these problems.
Recommendation: The Director of NFAC should continue current efforts to
define the nature and role of all interagency production, including but not limited
to NIEs and IIMs, and provisions should be made for the timely production of brief
interagency products which can be produced in a more responsive manner. Greater
guidance should be provided to the NIOs in the production of estimates. An admin-
istrative reference point for the NIO system should be maintained, which should
provide for systematic monitoring of the production of interagency estimates,
although no major administrative organization is indicated and considerable flexi-
bility should be preserved for NIOs to interpret their roles.
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6. The staff finds that in addition to the production of estimates, NIOs
contribute significantly in other capacities - as the DCI's focal point for
expertise, as a link to consumers, in warning, and as a link to academic and other
experts. However, the staff finds that the potential of the NIO system has never
been realized, and that the primary reason for the shortfall is a widespread lack
of clarity about the purpose and functions of NIOs. In particular, the tension
between the NIOs and production managers needs to be acknowledged and its value
recognized, while at the same time the role of each of the NIOs should be defined
to avoid replicating the function of any single division chief or office director.
In addition, the recruitment and selection of NIOs should reflect the abilities
and backgrounds necessary to perform the full range of NIO functions.
Recommendation: The NIO system should be maintained and its effectiveness
strengthened. Authoritative statements by the DCI and the Director of NFAC need
to be made defining the role of the NIOs, emphasizing the need for 1JIOs to actively
reach out to consumers and establishing the NIOs' role as community-wide, rather
than internal to CIA.
7. The staff finds that the community-wide responsibilities of the Director,
National Foreign Assessment, must be clearly defined. The intention implicit in
establishing NFAC and in subsuming the NIO system to it was that NFAC would take
on greater community-wide responsibilities. This has not occurred. For example,
inquiring into intelligence performance on the North Korean order of battle, the
staff found that the DCI's suggestion to have NFAC handle the issue to be beyond
its capabilities since the problem had far broader implications with the answers to
the majority of questions that needed to be answered found in the Department of
Defense. The intelligence community staff also lacked the capability to identify
the intelligence analysis resources devoted to the subject by all elements of the
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intelligence community. The staff believes that this capacity ought to exist at
the DCI level. The Committee expressed this view in its Classified Annex to the
FY 80 Budget Authorization Bill (HR 3821).
Recommendation: The DCI should reestablish an element at the community
level which is cognizant of all community analytic resources. This element might
be the community production coordination element urged above in recommendation
number 2.
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