A Needed Push in the Intelligence Community
By Douglas Farah
Mike McConnell, the director for national intelligence, recently announced a significant revision in how members of the Intelligence Community will be paid.
Rather than rewarding employees for simply putting in time, the new pay system seeks to reward performance. As McConnell said, you usually get the behavior you reward.
It is undoubtedly something of a risk, but there is little doubt that it is vitally necessary as a way to reward innovation and those who take a modicum of risk in their jobs, as well as show superior competence.
This is particularly true given the massive drain of the old guard in the Community following 9/11. One of the complaints and criticisms of the old system, which was clearly broken, was that it could not reward competence. People rose through the ranks and were rewarded largely by how long they could stick around.
One of the truly alarming figures in assessing the intelligence community across the board is that more than half have five years of experience or less. My full blog is here.