F. COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE -- Project on National Security Reform (PNSR)

The Project on National Security Reform - Knowledge Management Working Group

John Bordeaux, Ph.D.

Leader, Knowledge Management Working Group, (January-December 2008)

Project on National Security Reform

Contact: jb [at] jbordeaux.com

This page represents the deliberations and findings of the KM Working Group for the Project on National Security Reform , as shared with the Federal KMWG for purposes of information sharing and informal peer review.  (CSP's description of PNSR is here.)

The Center for the Study of the Presidency was under contract with the Department of Defense to investigate core problems, causes, and consequences that underlie the need for comprehensive reform of the U.S. national security system - as well as recommended solutions.  The interim report was delivered to Congress on 1 July 2008, and the final report was announced on 3 December 2008 at a National Press Club event in Washington D.C.    

The overarching thesis statement for PNSR: The U.S. fails to effectively or efficiently integrate the elements of power to execute national security planning or execution.

As you will see from the PNSR home page, there are several working groups for the project - to include Structure, Human Capital, Processes, Congressional Oversight, etc. We recognize the core problems in national security cross many of these; there are few "pure KM" problems that exist only in our domain. 

Across the PNSR study, we find the system failures to be comprehensive, and appear to sort themselves into six primary problem areas, four of which are systemic observations, one involves an “external player” critical to resourcing and oversight—Congress—and one relates to the system’s inability to maintain robust behaviors during transitions of power. Combining the insights from the KM research with those in related areas of the PNSR study, therefore, we observe that the national security system is often poor at achieving national security policy objectives.  The PNSR Leadership Team put it this way:

The overall performance of the national security system is inadequate and inconsistent, rarely achieving the desired unity of purpose, effect, and result. It follows a President-centric leadership model that places unsustainable demands on a single individual and usually denies adequate power and authority to subordinates. The small supporting staff must exercise a wide span of control over extremely powerful functional departments and agencies. The contending national security bureaucracies can stymie policy development and control policy implementation. Their efforts are not well integrated. There is no overarching national security culture to support collaboration, and strong departmental cultures act as barriers to unity of effort. The National Security Strategy Report, required by statute, has functioned primarily as a public relations document and not as an effective means for producing integrated action. Despite the rational processes in place to advise the President, decisions are more accurately characterized by bureaucratic politics. The departments fight among themselves to extract desirable positions for themselves from the President. Bureaucratic conflict and the inability to settle issues in a timely fashion paralyze centralized decision-making processes. Organizational learning is impaired by multiple system attributes that inhibit self-appraisal and shared information. The stovepipes that filter information and the centralized manner in which the system makes sense of the security environment undermine its ability to assess and react to change effectively. The departments have strong perspectives on the issues that are shaped by their cultures and their information. Incoherent collective action is the frequent outcome.[1]

KM Team Recommendations

The KM Working Group for PNSR developed an extensive list of recommendations, which can be found in the long version of the report.  These should be considered as the KM Working Group's final submission to the PNSR leadership, which did not approve the complete list.  These draft recommendations were:

Create an Office of Decision Support in the PSC Executive Secretariat to enhance decision support to the president and his or her advisors by extending existing counter-terrorism and intelligence community information sharing initiatives across all national security components and to all missions.

Consolidate security clearance procedures and approval so that individual clearances are respected across the national security system. 

Establish a single security classification and access regime for the entire national security system. 

Establish National Security Librarian Office to establish continuity of information across departments and administrations Create capacity to track current and past executive orders, policy decisions, issue papers, lessons learned, recommendations from outgoing presidential appointees, etc.

Create the position of Chief Knowledge Officer in each national security department and agency.

Create a Federal Chief Knowledge Management Officer Council to enhance cross-system knowledge flows and information management policy.

Create a single Information Services Center to coordinate and operate information services across the federal government. 

Enable a risk management rather than risk avoidance regime

Subordinate Chief Information Security Officers and associated security programs under operations directorates.

Develop understanding of operational impact, from Agency operations perspective and subject to that approval, prior to enacting security policy.

PNSR KM Recommendations