REVIEW OF CERTAIN ASPECTS OF AGENCY PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82-00357R000900010012-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2002
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: November 23, 1977
• Content Type: MF

PERS 77-3684
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IDEG 19
STATINTL
MEMORAND[IM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Acting Director of Personnel
SUBJECT . Review of Certain Aspects of Agency
Personnel Management
REFERENCE : Memo for .A/DCI fr D/Pers dtd 16 Sep 77,
subject: Follow-up on DCI Concerns
1. Action Requested: None; for information only. In your
comments on the referenced memorandum, you expressed your desire for
an earlier review of (a) impact of personnel flows on present and
future promotions and (b) the diversity in the board and panel struc-
ture within the Agency.
2. Impact of personnel flows on present and future promotions.
At this writing, the Directorates have not yet submitted
their completed Annual Personnel Plans for FY 1978 to the Office of
Personnel. In response to our request, the Directorates have provided
our office with special reports on their projected FY 1978 personnel
flows (estimated gains and losses) and planned promotions.
A consolidated report is being developed and will be avail-
able for your review by S December 1977.
3. The diversity of the board and panel structure in the Agency.
() You may recall from previous briefing materials pro-
vided to you relative to the board and panel structure, that the DDO
has 11 Directorate-wide boards, customarily differentiated by grade
so, for example, one reviewed grades GS-07 through GS-08 while another
reviewed all grade GS-lls. In contrast, the DDA has a system in which
each office has a part-time board that is senior to a panel structure
which in some offices is differentiated by grades and in other offices
is differentiated by skills. The Office of Finance is an example of
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the former while the Office of Medical Services is an example of the
latter. In the DDI, there is now a Directorate-wide Career Board
that is senior to panels at the office level, while sub-panels are
differentiated either by grade or by skill. The DDSFT has office-
level boards senior to panels differentiated by grade or by skill.
This diversity does not appear to create a significant
management problem. The responsibility for-managing each Career
Service is vested at the Directorate level, and each Deputy Director
is free to adopt the structure he finds appropriate to the needs of
his Career Service. Of all the Directorates, the DO is the one with
the greatest homogeneity of personnel; therefore, the DDO has found
it useful to have Directorate-wide boards, differentiated by grade
of officer reviewed. In contrast, the other Directorates are comprised
of offices with different functional responsibilities and staffed with
personnel of differing professions. The organization for evaluation
recognizes these differences. As the Directorates gain experience we
have seen some necessary modification introduced into the organizational
structure. Thus the present system is adaptive--which is a desirable
feature.
(6) Of greater management concern is the need for the Deputy
Directors to indeed exercise their responsibilities with respect to
overviewing not only the organization for evaluation but the process
of evaluation. Here, under current Agency policy as published in the
regulations and notices the Deputies have been given significant respon-
sibilities, such as that "to develop and establish uniform promotion
criteria", and beyond that, to assure that the details in the Career
Service personnel handbooks are consistent with revisions in Agency-
wide publications. Their responsibility is now explicit to monitor
the evaluation procedures, as practiced, to assure that they are
applied evenhandedly within their Directorates. . The role of the Office
of Personnel in this-regard is the development of Agency-wide guidance
relative to established personnel management policy, to provide advice
and assistance to component managers on matters of personnel manage-
ment, and monitor Directorate planning and implementation.
(40 The DO has a sizeable staff monitoring the activities
of its.constituent boards. The case is different in the other
Directorates. My staff has polled the senior personnel officers of
the other three Directorates informally to ask the question, "What
are you doing to monitor the organization, procedures, and activities
of the boards and panels?" As we expected, while workload require-
ments were substantial, we found that the resource commitment for
this activity was relatively modest usually consisting of staff work
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such a function.
by one or two individuals and overview by Directorate-level Career
Boards, or equivalent, which usually consists of the Deputy in concert
with his office chiefs. In each case, the promulgation and continual
revision of. the personnel handbooks for each Directorate requires a
review of activities and procedures and provides a mechanism to trans-
mit Directorate guidance to the offices. Continuing feedback is
provided to the Directorate-level personnel officers from the office-
level personnel officers. Finally, the Deputies themselves are involved
increasingly with a review of vital procedures, such as those for
ranking,' and have often provided centralized guidance. Thus, for
example, the A/DDA has recently issued guidelines for the preparation
of fitness. reports.
( We are currently reviewing proposals to enhance, with
modest resources, a central effort to evaluate all aspects of personnel
management in the Agency through a mix consisting of periodic employee
surveys, special studies, and on-site inspection. Included in this
evaluation would be an assessment, on a continuing basis, of the com-
parative ranking effort in the Agency.
(& With the addition of a more structured personnel manage-
ment evaluation system, we should have a relatively effective system
that combines Directorate responsibility within Agency-level review
and direction. The resource cost of this effort would not be great.
More elaborate centralized mechanisms to provide oversight of personnel
management. implementation within the Directorates would be quite costly
in terms of the commitment of relatively large number of personnel to
STATINTL
Distribution:
Orig - Adse
1 -.A/DDCI
1=ER
1 A/DDA
2 - AD/Pers
1 - OP/P$C
STATINTL op/PCB
(23 Nov 77)
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