This is pathetic:
In a sharp rebuke to the National Security Agency's leadership, an internal task force has concluded that the country's largest intelligence agency lacks vision and is unable to set objectives and meet them.
I could pull all the choice extracts for you but you should really read the full story to get a sense of just how bad things are. One ‘graph I will pull just to drive the meta-point home:
The 2006 results show that the NSA's senior managers scored slightly below average among intelligence agencies. The survey found that 43 percent of NSA employees say they are satisfied with the "policies and practices of your senior leaders," compared with a 46 percent satisfaction rate for all U.S. intelligence agencies.
Almost 60% of the workforce doesn’t trust the senior leadership in the largest intelligence agency in the country (if not the world). You wouldn’t bet with those odds, you wouldn’t cross the street with those odds, but somehow we expect government employees to manage their way out of those odds. This calls for Jack Welch, not a graduate of the federal management training system.
I could go on and on. In fact I just culled a page-and-a-half rant because I want to keep this short and to the point: You cannot manage your way out of this problem with the current crop of bosses. They have to go. THEY HAVE TO GO. They are not evil, they just bad. They’re bad leaders. Maybe they were good analysts or linguists or computer scientists, but they’re “managing” a key element in the national security arsenal into the ground.
DIRNSA, General, take a hint from the Navy and do what they do when they have “lost confidence in (an officer’s) ability to command.” Hold people accountable; bring in people who know how to fix broken organizations (not some FFRDC or the lot behind TRAILBROKEN); and watch the workforce get behind you. Keep doing whatever it is you think you are doing (hint: any insiders advising you are a part of the problem), and you’ll end up doing the Navy thing anyway (going down with the ship).
PS: If there was a reporter covering the national security beat that deserves an award for their coverage, it should be Siobhan Gorman. She manages to get the point across without (in my opinion) endangering either discrete or higher-level efforts. Nice work hon'
