-Caveat Lector- from: http://cryptome.org/nsa-reorg-et.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://cryptome.org/nsa-reorg-et.htm">NSA External Team Report on Reorganization</A> ----- Business Model and Resource Management The effectiveness of an organization is influenced greatly by its processes. Key to the operation of any business is the management of resources, people, equipment, knowledge, cash or capital. In the end, most resource issues can be reduced to financial ones, and that is the focus of this discussion. Currently, NSA does not manage its financial resources consistent with current business practices. It separates expense budgeting from headcount budgeting, it has less than state of the art cost management tools and processes, and it does not afford mission managers or oversight managers with sufficient information to understand what is being invested where. Couple this with the widely held belief that the decision making process within the Agency is not responsive and one arrives at a situation where sufficient authority, or empowerment, to cause events to happen and the resulting accountability for these actions do not exist. Our fundamental recommendation is to change the organization and underlying funding model in order to enable the accountability and empowerment of individuals closest to mission execution. In a business environment, such managers are called "product managers." They control the key variables of a product, its functionality, price, distribution and how it is promoted to its customers. Through control of these variables, they exercise authority over, and are responsible for, the product's profit and loss. We call the equivalent managers in the Agency "Mission Managers." They exist in the mission operations organizations (the SIM and IAM). A Mission Manager's role is to determine the mission requirements from the perspective of the customers for whom the mission is created and develop plans for causing the mission to be realized physically and operated in steady state. They have to create a financial plan that identifies the resources required over a specific time period and the deliverables created with associated benefits. The basic premise is that NSA should build its operating processes around these Mission Managers, empowering them to develop plans to create and operate missions, providing them resources to succeed, and holding them accountable for the success and failure of these missions. Individuals who succeed in small efforts are promoted to larger and larger ones, those who fail after repeated attempts and appropriate training, are removed from such responsibility. Decision making is pushed onto them and oversight is focused at supporting the team of day-to-day managers rather than second guessing them. For Mission Managers to succeed, they must have complete control of all resources required to realize and operate the mission. This includes expenses, people, facilities, and capital. Thus, at the end, all supporting organizations have to subordinate their individual judgments to those of the Mission Manager, and this individual has to control their budgets in order to insure compliance with the mission plans. Therefore, a Mission Manager will work out implementation plans with supporting organizations, such as technology development ones or systems integration ones, and close with them on budgets, deliverables and timelines along with acceptance criteria. The total budget of an operations organization is the sum of the budgets of the Mission Managers in it. The total budget of a supporting organization (such as ETR) is the sum of the budgets allocated to it by the individual Mission Managers. All costs are to be included in these budgets, for example, personnel salaries and benefits, costs of facilities, travel, professional development and equipment purchases. The present practice of separating headcount, or "billets," from financial budgets should end. For Mission Managers to have real control over their programs, they require a feedback loop to insure that performance of the organization matches the plan. This is done with a cost accounting system that matches expenditures to specific missions, programs and projects. The government, particularly DoD, is well acquainted with such processes. There is a class of work that has to be done within NSA that does not lend itself to sponsorship by Mission Managers, at least not the conventional ones to be found in an operating organization. This class of work can be considered corporate work. Research is a significant example, but there are others (such as Y2K work). Budgets for these organizations and functions, and for leadership offices should be driven corporately. Thus the overall budget for the entire Agency would be the sum of these corporate activities and the mission activities. Also, there are common support functions, such as human resources or financial management, that could either be supported by corporate funding or by mission funding The advantage of the former is managing similar resources in one spot, the advantage of the latter is making these support functions more responsive to the users of them. Which approach NSA takes with regard to funding these activities is not central to the o verall direction. Initially, the approach that least impacts the success of the Agency should be used. Research, both basic and applied, is sponsored and funded corporately, but is, in effect, a mission unto itself. This Mission Manager is the head of ETR and the customer is the KAL. It is with the KAL that ETR develops an investment plan and reports results, and demonstrates that the resources were well spent and the technology position of NSA is strong. Resource management can be illustrated through a process flow diagram: [original poor] The numbers in the above diagram refer to the following process steps. 1. In cooperation with each other, the SIM, IAM and ETR develop investment plans for missions. They are driven by Mission needs and the overall Agency vision. This is an iterative process that balances needs against costs and achievability. 2. The SIM and IAM submit proposed investment plans containing needs, benefits and implementation plans (a "business plan") to Office of Plans and Programs (OPP) for consolidation and COO approval. 3. ETR prepares and submits a technology investment plan covering long term investments reflecting technology trends and mission needs. In the role, ETR is acting as a "Mission Manager" where the mission is not an operational one but a planning and investment one. 4. The COO submits a consolidated investment plan to the KAL for approval. It is at this step that the Director, with advice from the KAL, achieves personal ownership of the plan. 5. The KAL, through the Congressional Budget Justification Book (CBJB), submits to DoD, DCI and Congress the various intelligence plans along with budget requests. 6. DoD, DCI and Congress approve, and revise as appropriate, plans and budget requests. 7. The KAL authorizes the COO to proceed with plans and budget requests as approved. 8. The COO (through OPP) assigns monies needed for operations missions to mission leaders (SIM and IAM). 9. The COO (through OPP) assigns monies needed by ETR for corporate activities. 10. The SIM and IAM assigns monies within their teams to Mission Managers who, in turn, assign monies to ETR for realization of their particular missions along with the associated mission requirements statements. 11. The ETR team prepares technical plans to meet funding and functional requirements and returns these plans to the respective Mission Managers for approval. 12. The ETR team delivers completed mission platforms that meet mission needs and budget allocations for use by the Mission Managers. 13. The ETR team delivers completed corporate programs to KAL. 14. Lessons learned from the field are used by Mission Managers to develop future plans. Coupled with the organizational changes discussed earlier, this overall process will focus all the necessary resources needed to achieve specific goals on specific individuals who will have the authority to allocate these resources to meet their respective needs. Decision making will occur at lower levels than today and be concentrated on individuals rather than collective groups. Success or failure will be more easily associated with specific people who can then be coached to improve or reassigned to positions better suited to their skills. With this fundamental change in how people are judged to be successful, the myriad of decisions necessary to run the organization will naturally fall out of the focus on making the Agency's missions successful. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Continue with the current program/budget approach (since the Agency is in the middle of a budget cycle) and submit the FY2001 CBJB using the current process. 2. Use the next six months as a transition period to move from the current process to this new process. 3. Identify Mission Managers and implement the cost accounting process described above. 4. Recast the already submitted FY2001 program/budget utilizing the new process and assign these costs to Mission Managers by March 2000. The initial goal is to just move to a new process, not to revisit operational decisions. This step should start to uncover pockets of expenses that have little or no mission relevance and for which no Mission Manager is willing to take responsibility. 5. Begin managing to the new process after March 2000. 6. Have the new process finalized and in place by June 30, 2000, develop the FY2002 program/budget using the new paradigm. Key Management Practices We evaluated current Agency management practices to determine legacy patterns that should be changed to make NSA most effective. Unlike most government organizations that contract the majority of their work, the Agency's culture is to do the work internally. This culture is based on a predominant elite work force in the 1970s and 1980s that maintained its hegemony over the private sector. NSA became a leading industry in the collection and processing of SIGINT and the protection of the nation's Information Security (InfoSec). However during the 1990s two key events occurred that have caused a significant problem at NSA. First, the rapid expansion of cyberspace and global networks, and second, the decrease of the Agency's budget as a result of the end of the cold war and the overall reduction in the DoD Budget. As a result of these two events, NSA can no longer lead the private sector, and the present management practices in the Agency must be changed to accommodate this new reality. We specifically selected five key management practices that are lacking in the Agency and developed recommendations to address this problem. The five management practices are: * Business Planning * Program Management * Systems Engineering * Make Versus Buy * Investing in the Future Business Planning To properly utilize its decreased resources in an expanding commercial field, the Agency must perform astute business planning for all of its programs as is done by the leading commercial companies. It is necessary to go back to basics and evaluate the main elements of business planning for each of the mission areas: A NSA Business Plan should consist of the following six areas: Business Description: The Agency must evaluate its business by clearly identifying and stating its principal products or services, markets and applications. NSA must continue to strive for excellence in those areas where it is supposed to have a distinct competence that is related to a need. As in the case of a commercial company, the Intelligence Community must be able to evaluate NSA's business and determine if its products and services are being served properly by the present institution. Market Analysis: The Agency must analyze its industry as part of the global commercial infrastructure. Companies in the commercial sector doing work related to NSA's mission are expanding rapidly. Does this imply that the Agency must have all the equipment and personnel to address this rapid expansion? Is the Agency going to continue to concentrate in pursuing traditional SIGINT missions in this new communication infrastructure? As part of its business plan, NSA must analyze and clearly state the business implications of the present trends in the industry and prioritize its functions to provide the highest possible return with the available dollars. This analysis cannot be performed in isolation but must be performed with the assistance of all stakeholders. Technology Research and Development: The Agency must continuously evaluate the status of the current technology to avoid obsolescence and react quickly to acquire new technologies or scientific approaches that may become essential in the next few years. Similarly, NSA must have a dynamic basic research and exploratory development program in those areas critical to the mission where the private industry is not investing to develop the same technologies. NSA must not duplicate technology research being performed by the private sector but rather buy their products or support their research. Manufacturing Operations: The Agency must evaluate its product/service production and operations. Is the present level of production or operations commensurate with the resources being allocated to those tasks? The critical paths in the development of products and services should be to ensure no interruption in the production/operations pipeline. Since the cost of producing products or providing, services is a function of the volume, economies of scales should be used to provide a best value product/service whenever possible. Management, Organization, and Personnel: Business planning must be performed to ensure that the Agency employees assigned to the various tasks have the correct set of skills to do the job. Management must make whatever staff changes are required to deliver the required products and services (see the chapter Business Model - Organization). Proper business planning cannot be performed without empowering NSA senior leadership to make the trades required to optimize the products and services being delivered. Funds: A business plan must contain the required funds to accomplish the various tasks. This fund allocation process in the business plan should be a key element of the five-year budget submission (see the chapter Business Model - Resource Management). NSA should justify the funds required to execute its mission during the next five years and submit the appropriate plan to Congress via the CBJB. The present draft NSA business plan does not address all the elements of a business plan as described herein and it should be revised to incorporate them. Specifically, we recommend the following, actions: 1. Task the COO to develop a business plan that includes the six elements above. 2. Ask the COO to hire people with systems engineering skills to develop the business plan and to allocate resources for the proposed products and services. 3. Contract for a series of lectures in business planning, to be given to the senior leadership and the COO group, to make everybody aware of the importance of proper business planning. Strive to emulate business planning in the commercial sector. Make Versus Buy Decisions Once intelligence needs have been approved and a SE assessment has been made to determine what products or services need to be developed to meet the requirements, NSA must consider whether these products or services should be provided internally or should be outsourced to industry. That decision process is usually referred to as the "Make Versus Buy Decision." Traditionally, NSA has depended on its own people to supply whatever is needed to meet its intelligence needs. But with the recent growth of the global network and the many new technologies being developed by the private sector, it is necessary for NSA to have a carefully orchestrated process to execute make versus buy decisions. Presently, make versus buy decisions are not based on the business case because the Agency does not run like a business. The present model assumes that labor is free, utility and space are also free and only component cost is compared with the cost of outsourcing the product when doing a make versus buy decision. This erroneous process does not provide the correct answers and therefore does not provide the best value to the government. Over the last thirty years NSA has hired many government employees to perform jobs that are best done by the private sector. Government employees perform both core and non-core tasks. The present culture is to attempt to do all the jobs in-house, with whatever resources become available, and if NSA does not have sufficient people to do the job, SETA contractors are hired to extend the government workforce. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Task the senior leadership to establish a process to: * Evaluate intelligence requirements * Prioritize the requirements * Perform make/buy decisions * Allocate the resources to do the most important jobs * Execute the program to meet intelligence needs * Deliver the products to the users * Ensure the Agency complies with this implementation plan 2. Select a task force to determine which functional areas should be considered a core competency area that must be maintained in-house. 3. Develop a framework to outsource all non-core competency programs, such as information technology in DDI and some of the functions being performed by the DDCM and DDS. 4. Nominate a task force to evaluate the present "Groundbreaker Program" and make specific recommendations in the Information Technology modernization plan. 5. Do not require the eventual contractor of any new outsourced program to hire 100% of the current workforce. Abolish most government jobs when the products or services are being outsourced. Investing in the Vision NSA must struggle to modernize because the Agency's culture, organizational structure and processes are focused on today's operational problems at the expense of focusing on future challenges. The Agency has a tendency to support current SIGINT programs at the expense of developing new methods to deal with the global network. The recommended organizational structure (see the chapter Business Model - Organization) establishes a special place under the SIM for the Global Response Mission. The SIM must evaluate all intelligence requirements and perform the SE analysis to determine if the needs are best met using Global Response, Tailored Response or the Global Network. The funds for the Global Network should keep increasing every year while the funds for the most traditional missions should decrease. Traditionally, NSA has been unable to stop any ongoing program when faced with budgetary constraints. Instead, the Agency makes uniform, across the board cuts that damage future programs in order to preserve legacy programs. The Agency should not exist to support the legacy infrastructure but to meet current requirements while it prepares itself for the new challenges facing the industry. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Hire business people with a proven innovative track record from the leading commercial companies in this field and from other parts of the U.S. government (even if some of these people have to be borrowed from other parts of the U.S. government). 2. Ensure NSA's Mission is being shifted to address the needs of the emerging global network. 3. Evaluate the budget by determining which functions cannot be accomplished, discuss them with the stakeholders and then either transfer or discontinue those programs that cannot go forward. 4. Do not sacrifice any portion of an essential emerging program to meet the needs of the legacy program that is being phased out. People and Culture We interviewed about one hundred people in the Agency, including most senior leaders, and asked very specific questions about the way people operate and the embedded culture. We learned the Agency is a very bureaucratic government organization, and that most of the behavior patterns were established during the 1970s and 1980s when there was plenty of money to execute its mission. NSA appears to operate like an entitlement program. Most people in the Agency are highly motivated and work very hard, but a portion does not. We also found a leadership culture that appears most interested in focusing on their positions and protecting their people's jobs at the expense of accomplishing the mission. Most of the people at NSA are hired night out of college and spend their entire lives in the Agency. Regardless of their work performance and their job responsibility, the Agency promotes people roughly at the same rate. The institution encouraged people to get deeply involved in the promotion process, to the point that civilian personnel wrote their own promotion reports, and supervisors endorsed the reports even if they did not agree, mostly to prevent animosity. However, the most critical aspect of the people and culture in the institution was the mindset related to lack of empowerment and accountability. We summarize the major problems with people and culture in the Agency in the following, areas: * Mindset * Agency Rejuvenation * Staffing Crisis - Specialized Skills * Salary Level Disparity * Promotion System * Military Personnel Careers. Mindset NSA's present culture overemphasizes loyalty to a particular function and its associated senior leadership, instead of full and frank discussions of problems, issues and concerns. This has created a culture that discourages sending bad news up the chain of command. The staff knows NSA is falling behind and is not properly addressing the inherent problems of the emerging global network, and the present management infrastructure does not appear to be supporting the required changes. In addition, we are concerned the present mindset fostered a society where people were afraid to express their own thoughts. Even though people spoke to us with true candor, they always wanted to avoid attribution because of the perception that the information was going to be used against them. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Establish clear behavior expectations with the new leadership team. Ask them to support your agenda to change NSA and reassign those who choose not to sign on. 2. Communicate directly with the employees on a regular basis by using "DirectorGrams." 3. Send a "DirectorGram" encouraging employees at all levels to discuss issues and present dissenting viewpoints with coworkers and supervisors. 4. Make the Director more accessible to employees by holding more "All Hands Meetings." 5. Encourage discussion of controversies at Director briefings. 6. Emphasize that the purpose of NSA is not to protect itself or maintain the status quo, but to accomplish its mission. The Director should keep restating the mission and emphasizing the vision. Communicate with the stakeholders about the new mindset based on openness and job performance. (U) Agency Rejuvenation Since NSA hires most of its employees directly from college and retains them during their entire careers, there is a lack of new ideas penetrating the Agency. Very few people are ever hired as middle or upper managers from the private sector. People get promoted from within and move up to the available jobs. Therefore, the Agency is perceived by many people (both within and without) to be insular and stagnant. Many of the supervisors in the Agency do not have the courage to deal with controversial issues. This lack of courage by supervisors to address controversial issues and make difficult decisions leads to low morale. The situation becomes quite demoralizing when some people in the Agency believe that all that they have to do to get a paycheck and be promoted is to show up for work. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Take advantage of organizational changes to consolidate resources, to become more effective and to abolish duplicative jobs. 2. Evaluate the claim that people who lose their Jobs or disgruntled employees within or without the Agency become a security risk. We have a criminal system to deal with security violations, and doing nothing is not an option because NSA's present direction constitutes a worse security risk. People should know that the Director has the right to abolish their jobs. 3. Hire leading commercial companies in NSA core competency areas to present weekly seminars, describing the implications of the new global network. Staffing Crisis - Specialized Skills In 1999 NSA was able to hire only roughly 25% of the critical skill employees that had retired in the previous year. This disturbing trend will continue because the average age of the NSA civilian employee is 43 years. In three years, NSA is likely to lose a considerable number of critical skill employees, because 13 to 23 percent of all employees with critical skills become eligible for regular retirement in 2003, while 10 to 21 percent become eligible for early retirement in 2003. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Be more aggressive in hiring young talents at leading universities by intensive recruiting, posting job availability, and advertising in newspapers and professional journals. 2. Form a task force to make specific recommendations about hiring middle and upper managers from the commercial sector. Salary Level DISPARITY One of the reasons why it is difficult to hire fresh talent from leading universities is because of a disparity in the salary levels offered to graduates. Salaries in the private sector for college graduates in critical career fields are about 30% higher than the Agency's level. The situation is even worse at the upper manager level because salaries offered by NSA to potential middle and upper managers are significantly lower than in the commercial sector. Specifically, we recommend the following action: Task the Director of Human Resources to develop a compensation system compatible with the commercial sector, emphasizing salary distinctions based on individual performance and marketplace value rather than longevity in federal service. Promotion System We believe there are three basic problems with the Agency promotion system for civilian employees. First, the promotion system appears to be based on seniority. Second, the promotion system to grades GG-14 and GG-15 are done at the Agency level instead of at the Key Component Level. Third, the Employee Promotion Assessment (EPA) system is not effective. We discuss each one of these separately and provide specific recommendations for each issue. Promotion System Appears to be Based on Seniority: NSA claims that the present promotion system is based on performance, but in fact it rewards seniority. For example, after 12 years on the job, both the top core employees and the average non-core employees are making similar wages. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Curtail the entitlement mentality embedded in the organization by making people realize that they must produce to get promoted and that if they do not produce they can be fired. 2. Send a "DirectorGram" to all employees emphasizing that promotion shall be based on performance and not on seniority. 3. Exercise existing authority to move more promotions to core functions (e.g. engineering, analysis) rather than support staff. 4. Ensure that; all promotions meet diversity requirements. Promotion System to Grades GG-14 and GG-15. The present promotion system reinforces the lack of thrust and empowerment of supervisors, because promotion to grades of GG-14 and GG-15 are done at the agency level. This situation is not comparable with any other major government institution. Supervisors (even at high executive levels) feel frustrated because they do not have the authority to promote their own people to GG- 14 and GG- 15. This situation creates low morale across the entire Agency. Additionally, NSA leaders serving as GG 14/15 promotion board members spend a disproportionate amount of time addressing personnel issues instead of concentrating on the mission and vision. Specifically, we recommend the following, actions: 1. Delegate GG-14 and GG-15 promotion authority to the respective key component levels. 2. Ensure fair promotion by balancing depth of experience and competence against career diversity and mobility. 3. Perform only one promotion board per year for each grade level. 4. Hold supervisors to meeting Agency policies with regard to diversity and equity. Employee Promotion Assessment: There are two major problems with the EPA program. First, EPA sets a negative confrontation between supervisors and their subordinates, thus many supervisors sign the EPA to prevent animosity with the employees even if the supervisor does not agree with employee's comments. Second, employees spend too much time trying to promote themselves by investigating what other people have written in their EPA to help their own cause instead of doing their jobs. Specifically, we recommend the following action: Abolish the EPA program and emphasize that: * Supervisors establish performance standards * Supervisors review job requirements with the employees on a regular basis * Supervisors write the performance evaluations on which promotions are based. Military Personnel Careers Since nearly 50% of the people working in the Agency are military, it is necessary for NSA to pay close attention to their career paths and performance. The Agency should select military personnel with the necessary skills to fulfill the Agency's missions. Seniority of military personnel at the Agency must be monitored because two patterns have emerged. At one end of the spectrum, some military personnel leave the Agency before they develop sufficient skills to be highly productive. At the other end, military personnel after two tours of duty at the Agency tend to become part of the insular organizational mindset instead of continuing to bring innovative ideas from other parts of the U.S. government. We also noted that many military personnel in the Agency are often not assigned to job commensurate with their capabilities. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Encourage military personnel with specialized skills (e.g. linguists) to remain affiliated with the Agency over time. 2. Encourage military personnel with general management skills to get substantial experience outside NSA and its affiliates. 3. Become a strong advocate to promote military personnel based on performance. 4. Task the Deputy COO for Military Affairs to develop a military personnel utilization plan. Stakeholders Relations Although there are both internal and external stakeholders, this section will focus on the external ones. Internal stakeholders, which can include an individual's superiors, peers, subordinates and employees in other parts of the organization, are addressed elsewhere in this report (see the chapters on the Business Model - Organization, and People and Culture). Stakeholders are individuals or entities with whom NSA is mutually interdependent. The key concept is interdependence. Just as any business would fail without its customers, NSA will fail if it neglects its stakeholders. They will go elsewhere to meet their needs, or Congress will eventually reassign some NSA responsibilities. By definition, NSA successes are intertwined with those of its stakeholders. Right now, when stakeholders tell NSA that "NSA doesn't get it," the Agency simply repeats itself or talks louder. NSA needs its stakeholders and must hold itself accountable for producing results in partnership with them. Not only is a good business plan needed, but the Agency needs to communicate it effectively in terms that stakeholders understand. Telling stakeholders that they "don't understand" is not productive. In terms of stakeholders, the intent is to influence, and to be influenced, by those key parties that affect NSA's ability to carry out its mission. The major challenge facing NSA in this effort is to communicate information in terms that stakeholders understand, as opposed to talking to them on "NSA" terms. Stakeholders have a variety of relationships with NSA, and both the entities and the individuals representing them have multiple personalities. This means that the Agency must work with them in distinct ways. How NSA approaches the Secretary of Defense, who is in the chain of command, may be quite different from how NSA approaches the Secretary of State, who is not. Discussions with a Military Service Chief may be quite different from that with his own SCE, simply because of the level of technical discussion. And meetings with the Army SCE might need to be focused differently from those with the Navy SCE, due to the different corporate responsibilities and the different individual personalities. We have broken the list of Stakeholders into four categories. We see these four as representative of interest groups that require different types of attention at the highest level. Within each group it remains important that NSA focus on the uniqueness of each organization and each individual. The four major external Stakeholder groups are: Congress and Taxpayers Executive Branch * White House (OMB, NSC) * Cabinet (e.g. State, Treasury) * DCI * Related Agencies (e.g. FBI, DEA) Department of Defense * Secretary of Defense * CINCs * Service Chiefs * SCEs Related Agencies (e.g. NRO, DIA) * Partners & Influences * Corporate Partners * Universities and Institutes * Contractors * (Foreign Partners) * State of Maryland * Public Interest Groups * Press Stakeholder beliefs do affect NSA in a significant way. If Congress is unhappy with NSA's behavior, it will affect the level of funding that NSA receives. Congress would like to give NSA more funding, but lacks confidence that NSA's ability to utilize the money wisely. Congress itself can be influenced by almost anyone on the above list. If the Secretary of Defense or the DCI is displeased with NSAs performance, they have direct operational control over what NSA does. Stakeholders are not to be feared, but rather incorporated into Agency thinking so that NSA can benefit from their involvement. NSA's goal must be to understand the perspectives of each stakeholder. Relationships don't work well when either party is unhappy. Stating that the other party doesn't understand is not a solution. Neither taking an aggressive stance not standing in defensive silence is likely to provide a resolution. There will be give and take in each stakeholder relationship throughout the process. NSA must maintain a position on openness toward its stakeholders. Stakeholder Relations Today NSA stakeholder relationships today are very uneven. Much of this can be attributed to the historic insularity of the Agency, which grew up in a culture of "NSA doesn't exist and doesn't talk to people who don't work at NSA." While this is understandable in the context of valid security needs (which remain true today), the need for constructive change exists. In a resource-constrained environment, NSA can no longer ask for money saying "trust us." Agency customers value NSA products, but they often believe that it is difficult to work with NSA. It is easy to conclude that the last thing the Agency needs today is additional tasking from enthusiastic clients, given the proliferation of missions that has created a severe resource and requirements mismatch. But reconciliation of that mismatch occurs in a different part of the managerial process (see the chapter Business Model - Resource Management) and is not the primary job for those who focus on stakeholder relations. The Agency must always facilitate all aspects of communications between and among stakeholders. The Stakeholder Office is not simply a customer advocate. The Agency must be able to say both "yes" and "no" to its customers -- and doing so in a way that keeps them satisfied. And saying, "no" effectively means being able to communicate the rationale for the decisions in a manner which the customer accepts as reasonable. Without good stakeholder relations, the desired transformation of NSA cannot occur. Stakeholder Goals NSA's primary stakeholder relations goal is, therefore, both to understand their party's perspective and to simultaneously communicate NSA's to them. The overriding objective is constantly improved communication, bringing both parties closer together and making the working relationships constantly better. Each side needs to continually learn from the other and to improve the manner in which each does business. There will always be ways in which NSA can work better with other intelligence Agencies to meet growing threats in the future. We believe that more and more of NSA's work will be conducted in conjunction with other federal agencies, making effective stakeholder relationships increasingly important. The Agency seems to have a mindset that stakeholder relations "has to be hard!" Aspects of the mission, of course, will always be hard. And some missions will be conducted at great personal risk, as attested to by the silent memorial in the main lobby. But hard doesn't necessarily mean painful. First of all, the Agency needs to identify the particular needs and issues of each customer. Distinctions need to be made between them, as would be done in relationships with different family members. The Agency needs to ask what NSA can do for them and keep in mind that it is not just what it does but the way it does it that makes a difference. The Agency needs to be sure that the right people are in stakeholder jobs. Not everyone is a people-oriented extrovert, and not everyone wants to be "friendly" all of the time. Different people can contribute in different ways to the NSA mission. But those who are chosen to be in the "public eye" must be those who want to be there and, who enjoy being there, and can even take some "abuse" and keep smiling. NSA needs to pick people who fit and who want stakeholder jobs. These are not " sabbatical" positions. The Agency needs to refine its corporate and personal communications skills. As we interviewed many employees it became clear that NSA generally talks like engineers. NSA will talk about the technic parameters of constructing a watch, describing gears and springs, when the customer simply wants to understand that we have just developed a better way to tell time. Even more important, NSA needs to learn to communicate what the ability to tell time might mean to a customer. Specifically, we recommend the following actions: 1. Take personal responsibility for the Congressional Relationship in the near-term. Over-time, this responsibility should transition back to the new stakeholder relations staff. 2. Quickly staff the new stakeholder office. Stakeholder relations are important enough to be considered as a critical skill within the Agency and have a specific career path. 3. Benchmark similar successful operations in both government and industry with the purpose of identifying behavior patterns that can be copied and integrated into NSA. 4. Integrate benchmarking into a day-to-day working plan for the Agency. The new stakeholder staff should make written commitments to the Director of what it is planning to achieve over the coming year. 5. Implement broader executive exchange programs at multiple levels. Do the same to an increasing decree on the operational side of the Agency. 6. Articulate the Agency's message clearly, understand the audience(s) better and speak in a language that the audience(s) understands. Recognize that the strength of stakeholder relationships has a direct impact on the Agency's ability to succeed. 7. Have the Stakeholder Office report directly to the Director. 8. Utilize the support of outside experts for training and apply modern "people technologies" in support of NSA's modern technology mission. CONCLUSIONS We provided many recommendations throughout the report. The most important conclusions are: 1 . Update, complete and implement the vision and mission statements and disseminate the information broadly. 2. Change the organization, the underlying funding model, and management practices to enable accountability and empowerment of individuals closest to mission execution -- the "mission managers." 3. Charge responsible managers to invest in order to avoid technical and mission obsolescence. 4. Develop and emphasize business planning, program management, and systems engineering skills needed to meet changing environment. 5. Foster a new culture that emphasizes openness, flexibility, and personal performance. 6. Acquire, develop and keep skills necessary for future success. 7. Influence, and be influenced by, the Agency's stakeholders. Correct the promotion system and emphasize that promotion is based on performance and job responsibility. EXTERNAL TEAM COMPOSITION (names removed) [Notation in original.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcription and HTML by Cryptome. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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