SUMMATION OF DCI EXPECTED INITIATIVES IN THE PERSONNEL POLICY AREA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000601730055-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 10, 2010
• Sequence Number: 55
• Publication Date: September 19, 1978
• Content Type: MISC

Approved For Release 2010/11/10: CIA-RDP05T00644R000601730055-8
19 September 1978
Summation of DCI Expected Initiatives in the Personnel Policy Area
I. Career Management
a. Establishment of meaningful written career patterns to
help the employee chart his future.
b. Publication of a pamphlet outlining the personnel
I
policies of the Agency. (This is supposedly 'under way, but
certainly want to check it before publication. Normally it
should be a compilation of polities that are extant and approved
by the DCI, but in our case, and this time, it probably will
establish new policies.)
c. Establishment of a meaningful career counseling
capability.
1. Career counselors are too senior today in
many cases to communicate well with their subordinates.
2. Individual supervisors, it seems to me, take
too little responsibility and interest in their sub-
ordinates.
d. We must develop a subspecialty category for non-managers,
at least in NFAC and DDO.
II Management Training
a. We apparently have a lot of management courses.
Nonetheless the majority of employees think we're bad at management
in general--not just personnel matters. The question is: Are the
courses any good; are they given at the right times; are there
enough attendees?
III Promotions
a. Absolutely clear that the fitness report form must be
scrapped.
b. In order to begin to put some teeth into it and keep
everyone from being graded high, there should be a comparative
evaluation required, e.g., Of the seven GS-14s I have marked in
this period, this individual is number 3."
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c. There. should be a grading factor on the individual's
ability to manage people (when applicable).
d. There should be a specific comment on equal opportunity
responsiveness.
e. The grading factor should be explicit and uniform rather
than written in by the rater.
f. It may be'well to have the comment section filled out by
hand to reduce the volume.
g. We need further standardization of the promotion panel
system. The move should be away from predominate influence and
control by-immediate supervisors. The panel should be impartial
and able to operate primarily on the basis of the records.
This would probably mean the abolition of many
of the present subdivisions for promotion. A single
panel in DDA, for instance, could promote communicators,
logisticians and others. They would not be in competition
with each.'other. They would simply be governed by the
terms of reference for the panel as to how many
communicators, how many logisticians, etc., to promote.
But one impartial panel would service almost the whole
directorate. It would have representation on it from
the different areas of expertise.
h. There should be more publicity, more visibility on the
overall promotion system.
i. The numbers of people to be promoted each year should be
promulgated before the beginning of the fiscal year--perhaps several
years in advance--thus permitting the younger people to understand
what their opportunities are going to be.
j. There should be more visibility to minority data in the
promotion system.
k. There should be more visibility to the projected percentage
opportunity for promotion.
IV. Assignments
a. Perhaps there should be a requirement that in order to
qualify for supergrade one must have served outside his directorate;
this to be phased in over three or four years.
b. Greater emphasis on and more formalized intra-directorate
rotations.
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p
c. Is our present system of allowing the employee to state
his preference for his next assignment adequate?
d. Are we giving out enough information about what opportunities
are available to the employee?
e. Should we make most of the reports officers working for
DD0 overseas NFAC people in order to give them exposure to their
countries of expertise?
f. We must establish some system where 1within each directorate
there is an individual responsible for guarding the interests of
the employee's career. At present it is generally the case that
the assignments are made by people who are responsible for current
performance of their units. Clearly there is a conflict of
interest here in assigning people who will best enable the super-
visor to turn in a good current performance, and assigning people
where it will enable them to pursue their career best. There
should be some agent representing the individual employee who has
ultimate authority over the assignments. He would, in the DDO for
instance, decide whether the employee was going to go on an overseas
assignment, a staff assignment, or an area division assignment, or
a CONUS assignment outside of the DDO. The individual would then
be made available to the people operating each of those areas for
specific assignment to a position.
g. We need to ensure Agency-wide announcements or advertising
of positions that are open. The Director of Personnel and DDA need
some control over this process so that divisions don't fill all
their jobs with their preferred people without giving new opportunity
to better qualified people from other divisions.
h. We need a thorough review of the husband/wife situation
and whether we can do anything more to help here.
i. We should do away with "walking the halls." Approach
greater pre-planning of people's moves--a sense of responsibility
to manage the career of the individual.
j. A greater visibility to the whole process.
V. Other
a. Need to determine for each directorate a flow-through
policy. How much are we going to let the system stagnate, or
force people out so that there will be a promotion opportunity?
This differs widely with different directorates and divisions.
In some there should also be a positive policy for lateral entry,
e.g., NFAC.
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b. Probably need some form of a personnel newsletter like the
DDA Exchange.
c. Need to ensure there's a system for periodic review of
whether we are recruiting and training for the types of skills we're
going to need in the future rather than the past.
1. Need to look carefully at the recruiting
process overall.
2. The time until acceptance,is far too long.
3. Need more vifibility on the college campuses--
getting our light out from under the bushel.
4. Specifically tailoring our approach to obtaining
minorities and special skills such as economic and
technical.
d. Ensure that fitness reports are available only to authorized
people.
e. Have some centralized authority that ensures that fitness
reports are turned in on time.
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