Broader Experience for Higher Intelligence

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If you're an employee at the FBI or the Defense Intelligence Agency, you may soon be pulling a tour of duty at the CIA -- especially if you want to qualify for a promotion to a top job in the U.S. intelligence community.

The 16 intelligence agencies in the federal government are moving to a "joint duty" requirement for promotions. The program is part of an effort to break down barriers between the intelligence agencies and to broaden the experiences and knowledge of intelligence officers, much as the military services have done through joint assignments and education programs.

Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, began the intelligence community's Civilian Joint Duty Program this week with a signing ceremony that was attended by Cabinet officials. The program has been in the works since last year, when John D. Negroponte, McConnell's predecessor, began taking steps to better integrate the 16 agencies.

In April, McConnell announced plans for major changes in how the 100,000 employees in the intelligence community are hired, assigned, evaluated and paid. He said the changes, including joint duty assignments, would begin over 100 days as part of a "radical transformation" in U.S. intelligence gathering.

The push to foster a "joint mission" atmosphere inside intelligence agencies grew out of findings by congressional and presidential commissions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The panels called for a restructuring of the intelligence community, known as the IC, so that agency leaders and analysts could better "connect the dots," as one report put it.

Beginning Oct. 1, most employees must have joint duty experience before they can be promoted into jobs where they would report directly to the head of their agency or intelligence unit, Ronald P. Sanders, the top personnel adviser to McConnell, said in a conference call with reporters.

Current employees will not lose their jobs because of the new requirement, but their successors will need to show joint duty experience in past assignments or obtain waivers. Sanders said waivers "will be difficult to come by, to maintain the credibility of the program."

A list of senior positions will be compiled and will grow annually, so that 95 percent of the top ranks will require joint duty experience by 2010, Sanders said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has created an internal Web site where intelligence employees who are General Schedule 13 and above may start applying for joint duty assignments.

"Joint duty is strictly voluntary," according to a copy of "frequently asked questions" posted on the Web site and provided to reporters. "However, completing a joint IC duty assignment will be a pre-requisite for promotion to most, if not all, senior executive and senior technical positions."

Employees can get credit for joint duty by working at McConnell's intelligence directorate, at a national intelligence center, by completing a tour of duty at another IC agency or by gaining certain experience outside the IC, such as with the military, another federal agency, the private sector or an academic institution, the Web site said.

Most employees will serve one to three years away from their home agencies, depending on job requirements, Sanders said. Employees in war zones, where interagency cooperation is the norm, will get credit for a full year of joint duty even if their tour is for less than a year.

Some employees will be able to use past assignments, for a period going back to Sept. 11, 2001, to meet the joint-duty requirement.

Officials expect to see more than 1,000 employees at any given time on a joint duty assignment, Sanders said. McConnell's staff will track promotion rates and other personnel statistics to ensure that agencies do not hurt the careers of employees while they are away.

"Our goal is a set of senior leaders with a global enterprise perspective," Sanders said.

Joining McConnell at the signing ceremony, according to a press statement, were Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Energy Department Deputy Secretary Clay Sell; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace; and Negroponte, now the deputy secretary of state.