THE INSPECTION FUNCTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85B01152R000100050057-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 57
• Publication Date: March 7, 1983
• Content Type: REPORT

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ROUTING AND TRANSMITTAL SLIP 17 Marc
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REMARKS
Harry :
This is a short paper which we have shared
with the DCI and the DDCI on where we wish to
go with the inspection function in the future.
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STAT
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/--5- 7 MAR 1933
The Inspection Function
I. The inspection process is vital to the Agency and
people.
-- Management benefits from an occasional objective
critique of component performance, leadership,
staffing, and organization.
-- Agency employees benefit from periodically having the
opportunity both to express their individual views and
to be heard on matters of importance to them without
fear of reprisal.
-- The existence of an inspection process reduces, both
directly and indirectly, abuses of law, executive
order, and regulation.
-- The Agency's credibility with Congress is enhanced by a
vigorous inspection process, especially on issues
related to our integrity.
II. The inspection process can also play an important role in
developing the Agency's future leadership. Participation
in the process reinforces the importance of "playing by
the rules." Just as important, inspectors look at Agency
components from top to bottom, hear all the views on how
well they are performing, see both successful and
unsuccessful management, and make recorrendations for
improvement. The inspection process provides an efficient
learning experience. Too often, however, we share this
experience only with people who are completing a final
assignment or who have reached their full potential.
III. In recent years the OIG has had about professional
inspectors, mostly on rotational assignments, devoted to
the component inspection program, investigations, and
grievances. We believe this level of effort is about
right. There has been constant gentle pressure on the
Deputy Directors to nominate good candidates, but the fact
is that most of our best inspectors have approached us
directly. Despite recruiting problems, the quality of the
staff has improved.
Staffing the office with people who are both high-quality
and perceived to be "on the way up" has, however, always
been a problem. The most revealing test of directorate
attitudes towards their people on rotation with us is, of
course, the quality of the assignments they are offered
when they return. Too few of our officers have left the
staff for more prestigious line assignments; too often the
reverse is the case. Inspector assignments are not viewed
CONFIDENTIAL
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Vi 11-dLi N 11tl,
as being career enhancing. This central fact reflects on
our ability to attract people who are moving up. Although
lip service is paid to the importance of senior staff
assignments, jobs in the Agency's line organizations are
nearly always given higher priority; and the personnel
involved receive greater career recognition.
IV. Despite difficulties, the IG function should continue to
be staffed primarily by people who are not permanently
assigned. This helps take advantage of the accumulated
wisdom and experience of people from the Agency's line
components and makes effective use of the learning
experience of a tour on the IG Staff. It also avoids
creating a small permanent staff without opportunity
elsewhere and without the basis for judgment which comes
from personal management experience. It will continue to
be desirable to have a broad mix of experienced people,
with sound judgment and independence of mind, grade 14 and
up, doing inspections and investigations.
V. The leadership of our inspection teams, always a
critically important function, must be given special
attention. We should seek to have five or six senior
people, some of whom might be at the office director or
office deputy director level, with the OIG at all times to
assume team leader roles. These individuals could come to
us on final assignment; but we should also encourage
people to take on these roles earlier in their careers
whenever possible. We might seek to enhance the prestige
of this assignment by calling these individuals Associate
Inspectors General, and by seeking ways to increase their
association with the DCI and DDCI throughout their assign-
ment with us. They should be selected with an eye to
their reputations and integrity, and it should be made
clear that their basic responsibility is to help the
Agency function better.
VI. In addition to increasing slightly the number of potential
team leaders, a very different mechanism for staffing the
teams themselves could both improve attitudes toward the
inspection function and, more fundamentally, enhance the
usefulness of the entire process. I propose that we
continue our use of officers at the SIS 1 and 2 and GS-15
levels as inspectors, but that we borrow more of them from
their line assignments to participate in inspection teams,
rather than accepting them on rotational assignments. I
also believe we should draw from only those approximately
GS-15s currently ranked in Category I or II. To help 25X1
ma a this arrangement palatable to the directorates, we
could limit the length of such assignments to about four
months. (We can also explore the feasibility of using
some individuals in a more limited way for even shorter
periods. We might, for example, borrow the DCOS in 25X1
to hel.p in a future inspection of Or a 25X1
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branch chief in the Office of Global Issues might be
"borrowed" to help inspect SOYA.) To make either of these
shorter term approaches workable, we would need to
schedule most of our inspections at least eight months in
advance, so that we could accurately project our manpower
needs, and so that line managers could reasonably plan for
temporary assignments of their people. Increasing our use
of short-term staffing in these ways should make it easier
to attract high-quality talent, and it should help us
deliver a more credible and effective product.
VII. A problem to be considered is the impact on component
operations of borrowing quality people for short-term
assignment to the OIG. We don't see this as too burden-
some. Probably on the order of 10 inspectors would be
assigned to us on this new "four-month" basis at any one
time. The balance of our needs could be met by the five
or six team leaders described above, by as many as 15
additional inspectors on longer term assignments, some
doing inspections and some working on grievances and
investigations, and possibly by the more extensive use of
people for very short and sp is assignments. At the
present time there are about officers who are Category 25X1
I or II GS-15s, or SISers in grades 1 and 2. Use of the
occasional highly ranked GS-14 would also help reduce the
burden on components. The impact of this approach on any
individual component will, of course, obviously vary with
the timing of assignments, the specific individuals
chosen, the component's workload, and other factors.
In order for the IG Staff itself to function effectively
with this new modus operandi, we would need to do every-
thing possible to enable new members of the staff to
perform well quickly. Among other things, we would need
an effective two- or three-day indoctrination/training
program, including attention to the "cultural adjustment"
time required when people abruptly change job environ-
ments. We should continue to attempt to find ways to make
maximum use of the inspector's time on substantive matters
and to minimize their involvement in the nonsubstantive,
aspects of the inspection process. Most difficult, we
would need an effective planning process, with careful
consideration to the inspections we plan to do, their
exact scope, and our manpower needs for each, well in
advance. This will require more attention to estimating,
as accurately as possible, how much time a given
inspection will take. And it will require more arbitrary
deadlines and judgments earlier in the process about the
scope of each planned inspection. Needless to say, this
"planning process" must allow for the addition, at the
last minute, of a high priority new task at senior manage-
ment request.
CONE bENTIAL
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-- Tighten up on our reporting format, with more analysis,
a minimum of descriptive material, and more attention
to the tactics of helping management face tough issues
effectively.
IX. Finally, we should consider increasing the involvement of
senior managers, particularly the Deputy Directors, in the
IG process. A way to do this might be a twice-per-year
review of proposed activities over the coming 12-18
months, with a projection of the kinds of manpower we
might wish to "borrow." This could be combined with a
status report on the numbers and types of investigations
and grievances currently on our plate. Such a session
would also help us "get the word out" on management and
personnel issues we are seeing.
X. Taken together, these changes could:
-- Greatly increase the utility and credibility of the IG
process to senior managers, office and division chiefs,
and the Agency as a whole.
-- Enhance our credibility with our overseers.
-- Help solve our staffing problems, while contributing to
the development of the Agency's senior leadership.
XI. Assuming enthusiastic DCI/DDCI/ExDir support, the next
steps are to:
-- Discuss these ideas with the Deputy Directors.
-- Get senior management agreement to a specific plan of
inspections over the next year; develop the staffing
needs for each and talk to the Deputies about our
specific people needs.
-- Consider "publicity" of some kind to explain the new
approach to component chiefs.
CO I AL
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