Rewarding Intelligence

The government's intelligence community is changing its pay system to better reward agents and analysts, part of an effort to fix problems identified after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The world has changed pretty dramatically. So we wanted to do something that would put emphasis on rewarding superior performance," said Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, the first of the 16 agencies in the government's intelligence community that will convert to the new pay system, will make the transition in September. Officials expect the system to help in the recruitment and retention of civilian employees and make it easier for employees to take assignments outside their home agencies -- a requirement for those who aspire to a top intelligence leadership position.

McConnell appeared at a news briefing last week to underscore his personal commitment to the new pay system, which will replace the decades-old General Schedule that is used by most federal agencies. That system has been faulted by critics for primarily rewarding employees for their time in government rather than how well they do their job.

McConnell retired as a Navy vice admiral after 29 years of service and worked for about 10 years at a consulting firm before returning to government last year as the second director of national intelligence.

His experience in the private sector, he said, reinforced the value of sharing information and coordinating across organizational boundaries -- top concerns of the commissions that reviewed intelligence practices after 9/11.

Many federal employees are wary that pay-for-performance systems can be fairly administered. In 2001, a performance-based pay program proposed for the CIA went to the back burner after employees complained to members of Congress.

"Now there will be some concerns; there always are concerns," McConnell said. "But basically think of it as a merit-based system that rewards high performers. It has the flavor of the private sector, in that you get superior performance. One of the ways it is often described is that you get the behavior that you reward. So that is the way we are thinking of this."

In designing the new system, officials have benefited from a pay-for-performance system that has operated for about a decade at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), where "the results have been spectacular," McConnell said.

Officials also used feedback from intelligence employees to shape the new system, which is called the National Intelligence Civilian Compensation Program.

A number of officials who oversee personnel policies in the intelligence community joined McConnell for the announcement of the new pay system. They included Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for national intelligence and a key architect of the new system; John S. Allison of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Mary Kay Byers of the National Reconnaissance Office; Ed Carpenter of the National Security Agency; Tom Coghlan of the office of the director of national intelligence; Ellen E. McCarthy of the Defense Department; Pamela A. McCullough of the FBI; Terri Powers of the CIA; and Laura B. Snow of NGA.

Officials would not say how many people work in the intelligence community, but it has been estimated at about 100,000. Nearly half of the workforce has less than five years of service, Sanders said, a reflection of hiring and staffing changes since 9/11.