The intelligence community is going to share similar budget cutting pain in the next decade along with the rest of the federal government to help reduce the nation’s debt and a key area for savings will be in information technology (IT), James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, said yesterday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) turned in its plans yesterday for intelligence spending over the next 10 years and it calls for “cuts in the double-digit range with a ‘B,’” Clapper said at the annual GEOINT conference in San Antonio, Texas, referring to billions of dollars in reductions that the intelligence community is facing.
Over the past month, leaders within the five major agencies of the intelligence community have been meeting intensely to focus on finding opportunities for accelerating integration across the community, “concentrating on integrating a common IT architecture” while still allowing for “mission or agency specific capabilities,” Clapper said. The effort is being led by the CIO within ODNI, he said.
Clapper said the 10-year stretch goal he has set for the intelligence community is to obtain half of the savings through IT efficiencies.
The near-term focus is on “eliminating unnecessary and redundant” information systems across the community, Clapper said. He has tasked the intelligence agency CIOs with developing a path forward that is due in December.
The implementation plan will require some investment in the “near-years” that Clapper hopes will provide rewards later.
Clapper also said that agency CIOs and chief financial officers are “connected” in the effort to save money.
Between 20 and 25 percent of the intelligence community’s FY ’12 budget request is for IT-related spending, making it an obvious target for savings, Clapper said. He singled out technology advances in cloud computing that have “great potential” for the community as an “enabler, not a panacea.”
There is already precedent for budget cutting within the intelligence community that can be drawn on for lessons for proceeding in this austere environment, Clapper said. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing desire for a peace dividend, Clapper, who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s, said the drawdown of the intelligence workforce was not managed well.
The nation’s all source analysis, human intelligence, and national reconnaissance capabilities all suffered in the budget drawdowns of the early 1990s, Clapper said. This time around, Clapper said there will be “no salami slicing,” meaning everything won’t be treated as having equal value.
The budget plan submitted to the Office of Management and Budget attempts to protect “our people,” which Clapper said are “our most valuable asset.” He said it is important that every year the intelligence community still be able to hire people with new ideas and energy.
And while it will be difficult, Clapper said research and development needs to be sustained and protected and not given away to pay for the most immediate needs.
Future investments will likely be targeted in areas that can meet missions across the intelligence community.
Clapper said future investments will favor capabilities that “serve the most intelligence masters.”
He also said that industry will be sharing in the fiscal hardship, noting that the “contractor profile” within the intelligence community will have to decline.