The Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence Is Running A Quiet Restructure

The Restructure The Public Org Chart Does Not Show

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in the middle of a structural reorganization that the public organization chart does not yet reflect and that the office has not characterized in any formal public communication. Three officials at separate ODNI mission centers, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the reorganization in interviews over the trailing two weeks. The reorganization is, in the officials' rendering, the most consequential ODNI internal change since the office's establishment in 2004.

The reorganization affects the offices that handle the analytic integration function the ODNI was created to perform, the budget integration function that the office added in 2010, and the foreign liaison coordination function that the office has, in practice, exercised more aggressively under each successive Director. The changes alter the reporting relationships among the offices, the budget authority each office holds, and in some cases the categories of intelligence community product that each office is responsible for shaping.

What The Officials Described

The first official, who works in an analytic integration role, described the analytic integration function as being narrowed in scope. The narrowing reflects, in the official's interpretation, a posture by senior leadership that the analytic integration function had grown beyond what the statutory framework supports and beyond what the agencies the function integrates have been willing to operate under. The narrowing returns analytic integration to a more circumscribed role focused on collaboration coordination rather than on substantive analytic editing.

The second official, working in budget integration, described the budget integration function as being expanded in scope. The expansion reflects, in the official's reading, the leadership's conclusion that the budget tool is the most effective lever the ODNI has for shaping intelligence community priorities in practice. The expansion increases the budget-line review authority the ODNI exercises over the National Intelligence Program budget categories.

The third official, in foreign liaison coordination, described the liaison coordination function as being substantially reorganized rather than simply expanded or narrowed. The reorganization, in the official's description, places foreign liaison coordination under a new reporting structure that involves the Principal Deputy Director rather than a separate Assistant Director, and that brings the function closer to the budget and policy-coordination functions than the prior structure permitted.

The Statutory Frame

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with specific statutory functions. The functions include the analytic integration, the budget integration, and the foreign liaison coordination roles the three officials describe. The statute is permissive enough that the specific organizational arrangement within the office is within the Director's authority to modify. The reorganization currently underway is within the Director's authority. The reorganization is not, however, the kind of change that the office has historically made without congressional notification.

The relevant congressional intelligence committees have been informally notified, by the description of two committee staffers. The notification has not produced public commentary from the committees. The committees are, in the staffers' characterization, watching the implementation closely. The committees have not, at the time of this report, requested formal testimony on the reorganization. The committees may yet do so as the implementation progresses.

The Workforce Effect

The workforce effect of the reorganization is, in the officials' description, the consequence the office is most cautious about. The analytic integration narrowing will, by the office's own internal planning, result in reassignments for approximately 130 positions over the next twelve months. The budget integration expansion will require additional staffing that the office is in the process of recruiting through the standard processes. The foreign liaison reorganization carries the smallest workforce impact in absolute terms but the most substantial impact on the senior policy levels that interface with foreign liaison services.

The workforce communication has, in the officials' rendering, been managed less than fully transparently. The affected workforce learned of the reorganization at the senior level through informal channels rather than through formal communication. The pattern of informal first notification has produced, predictably, the kind of workforce concern that institutional change at scale produces when the communication does not match the magnitude of the change.

The Foreign Liaison Read

The foreign liaison community, by the candid description of officials at two foreign embassies in Washington, has noticed the reorganization at the working level. The officials described their respective services as treating the reorganization as a signal that the ODNI's posture on liaison coordination is shifting. The shift has, in the officials' rendering, produced informal conversations within their services about whether to recalibrate their own posture on certain categories of cooperation.

The foreign services are not, on the available description, contemplating any material reduction in the cooperation patterns that have developed over the trailing decade. The services are, however, attentive to the structural signal that the reorganization carries. The attentiveness is the institutional norm under which liaison relationships are sustained across changes of administration and across changes of intelligence community leadership.

What To Watch

The next inflection point is the President's Budget submission, which will arrive in early to mid-May and which will reflect the budget integration changes the reorganization has put in place. The submission will indicate, in plain reading, how aggressively the ODNI intends to use the expanded budget authority. A submission that includes specific line-level interventions on community agency budgets, particularly the agencies that have historically operated with the most institutional autonomy, will indicate the most aggressive posture.

The second inflection point is the next round of public congressional testimony, expected in the late spring or early summer. The Director's choice to address or to decline to address the reorganization in the public portion of the testimony will be the kind of signal that the broader intelligence community will read carefully. Officials at the working level are watching closely. The reorganization is the kind of institutional change that, by its nature, produces consequences that the contemporary commentary does not adequately characterize until the changes have been operating long enough for the consequences to surface in the substantive product the office produces.