Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System: An Independent Assessment of Design, Implementation, and Impact

摘要

By implementing a human resources management system that more directly links pay to performance, the Department of Defense is seeking to improve both individual and organizational performance through greater cooperation and collaboration that will ultimately lead to better intelligence products. At its most fundamental level, the Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System (DCIPS) is intended to help protect the national security interests of the United States. DCIPS was the result of an effort to develop a unified, performance-based human resources management system for nine U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) intelligence components, whose collective mission is to protect the national security of the United States. The system is in various stages of implementation in each of the components, and is ultimately expected to affect more than 50,000 employees. In large part due to perceptions that DCIPS could result in unfair treatment of minorities and women, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2010 directed the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to designate an independent organization to conduct a review of DCIPS. Selected in January 2010 to conduct the review, the National Academy of Public Administration (Academy) appointed an expert Panel to assess and make recommendations regarding DCIPS' design, implementation, and impact. With regard to the three key focus areas of its investigation, the Panel finds the following: (1) The design of DCIPS is fundamentally sound and conforms to accepted principles for designing performance-based compensation systems, including appropriate equity considerations and internal checks and balances to ensure fairness; (2) Implementation of DCIPS has been flawed; and (3) It is too soon to draw conclusions about the impact of DCIPS, due to the limited amount of experience with the system.