PROBLEM ORIENTED PLANNING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90T00435R000100060003-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 16, 2013
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: June 29, 1988
• Content Type: MEMO

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/05/16: CIA-RDP90T00435R000100060003-3
MEMORANDUM FOR: All NIOs
D/AG
C/SRP
FROM: C/NIC
SUBJECT: Problem Oriented Planning
As I mentioned at the off-site, I believe the NIC needs a planning
process that is problem-solving in its orientation, rather than publication
oriented. I want to solicit your contributions to developing such a process
in the form of responses to the questions that follow. The whole idea is to
identify the most important problems that NIOs severally and the NIC
collectively ought to be concentrating on, and to develop strategies for
solving or managing them. NIOs should concentrate on their areas of
responsibility but may, with due concern for the sensibilities of their
colleagues, wish to offer thoughts on related "turf." The AG and the SRP
have cart blanche.
What do you see to be the principal foreign and national security
policy problems and concerns of the USG over the next 6-12 months? And
3-5 years?
I don't see how you can respond to this without some speculation about
the outcome of the November elections and its policy impact. Yet, if
non-partisan discretion is exercised, this is both proper and necessary.
What do you think are the most pressing intelligence issues that derive
from such policy concerns...or that provide a necessary backdrop to the
conduct of policy whatever its specific direction?
Here I'm interested in two kinds of judgment. First, discrimination:
We should be concentrating on X and paying less attention to Y for Z
reasons. My sense is that, on average, each NIO should identify
.5-7 issues...but that's, of course, your call. Things that don't make the
cut would be matters that are important but well in hand (any of those?),
not truly "national" in nature, or not truly important.
Second, attention to deeper trends that may represent a sea change in
the character of the target and, hence, the intelligence task. For example,
turbulence in the relationship between government and society in the USSR,
the proliferation and concealability of weapons, Islamic fundamentalism, and
"internationalization" of economic life are changing the nature of existing
intelligence tasks.
1
CONFI NTIAL
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/05/16: CIA-RDP90TOO435R000100060003-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/05/16: CIA-RDP90T00435R000100060003-3
What strategies, spanning collection, processing, and analysis, are
needed to solve these intelligence problems? Do you think these
strategies require new resources, skills, or behavior from the
Intelligence Community? What do NIOs or the NIC need to do to put the
required strategies into effect?
Please give me your response in memo form by 18 July, and copy other
addressees of this memo. Length and format is up to you. Responses don't
have to be elaborate, but they should be specific enough so that I can
imagine the management implications of what you are saying. The deadline is
set so I can get responses to reflect on and react to before I go on a short
TDY and summer leave. If it's unworkable for some of you, let me know.
2
CONFIDENTIAL
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/05/16: CIA-RDP90T00435R000100060003-3