Monday, February 21, 2005
Draft
McCausland
39
maximize their personal and unit effectiveness. Most courses are one to five days in
length and voluntary.
Finally, the executive development level addresses leadership challenges in the
framework of recent international, domestic, operational, and technical developments that
affect the CIA and the intelligence community as a whole. These courses are designed
for GS15s and Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) professionals from all directorates and
other representatives from the intelligence community. This includes the DCI leadership
seminar that is a yearlong program with participants maintaining their regular positions.
Participants in this program attend selected seminars throughout the year with senior U.S.
government officials and private sector leaders.
Still the CIA University and its corresponding programs are relatively new
phenomenon.
It remains to be seen whether they will have a lasting impact on the
development of intelligence officers and the culture of the organization. The central
weakness of this program is that it is largely voluntary in nature for courses below the
executive development level, which are nominative. There is no clear linkage between
individual performance, reviews, selection for course participation/development,
subsequent assignments, and enhanced opportunities for promotions.
Some officials
believe, however, that the results of selection boards over the past few years indicate
anecdotally that a trend in this direction is beginning. If so, this will over time encourage
more employees to take advantage of these programs, but this will not occur immediately.
Changing existing policies in order to make completion of the mid-level course or the
offerings at CIA University a prerequisite for promotions in grade or assignments of
increasing responsibility have been considered and rejected for the near term. This is due
Convention