New directive will ease integration of intelligence agencies

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has published a new directive that will standardize job descriptions across the 16 intelligence agencies and play a key role in establishing a common pay system, a top personnel official said this week.

The Sept. 17 document establishes a communitywide policy for defining and cataloging workforce competencies, said Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for ODNI, in an interview with Government Executive. It is expected to help integrate the intelligence agencies, which operate outside the Office of Personnel Management's standard taxonomy for government occupations.

"This is going to be our Rosetta Stone," Sanders said. "It will now [require] common language for describing the work of analysis, collection, science, management and HR disciplines."

The directive will serve as the foundation for establishing pay levels and advancement criteria under the National Intelligence Civilian Compensation Program. ODNI announced the program's rollout in May and in September the Defense Intelligence Agency became the first to convert to it.

Promotions will be less frequent under the new system because the rigid General Schedule will be collapsed into five broad paybands, said Jane Homeyer, director of the competencies and standards office at ODNI. "We want to make those promotions more meaningful and more equitable," she said, "so we're using the [standard] competencies [outlined in the directive] as a foundation to say these are the minimal qualifications someone must have to move up."

The guidelines also will help facilitate the community's joint-duty program, which requires all employees to complete at least one assignment outside their home agency to be eligible for advancement to the senior ranks.

"This is like the periodic table of elements," Sanders said. "Every job and occupation can be described through a combination of these elements, and the performance standards and qualification standards are the chemical equation. We'll turn them into a reaction."

He added that the standard competencies will be listed in a directory that has been retrofitted to the community's analytic resources catalog, a comprehensive database that tracks the experience and expertise of thousands of intelligence analysts.

"Now all of our analysts are inventoried against the competencies [in the directive], and we can reach out and find experts," Sanders said. "If we need a Farsi-speaking astrophysicist, we could go to the [database] and say, 'These are the characteristics, attributes and skills we need in an analyst. Do we have any?' "

In addition, the directory will be used to catalog training courses. For example, employees and managers will be able to look up classes of interest and find out which competencies are taught.

Other agencies have created similar directories, but the intelligence community's version is revolutionary in scope, according to Sanders. "We will be able to use the competency directory to leverage the capabilities we have on board within the [community], whether that is civilian, military officer or contractor," he said.