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Why Is the Intelligence Community So Difficult to Redesign? Smart Practices, Conflicting Goals, and the Creation of Purpose‐Based Organizations
Author(s) -
HAMMOND THOMAS H.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0491.2007.00364.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , redundancy (engineering) , sociology , computer science , public relations , knowledge management , political science , biochemistry , chemistry , operating system
The adoption of “smart practices” requires that smart practices can actually be identified for the areas of public policy in which we are interested. For the problem of designing structures for public agencies, however, identifying smart practices is not easy. This article explores the reasons for the substantial conservativism, lasting over 50 years, regarding the structural design of the U.S. intelligence community. One central argument is simply that it was very difficult to discover a clearly superior structure; in fact, the long‐standing structure may have had some unrecognized virtues. But the other central argument is that one smart practice may have emerged since the 9/11 attacks: It involves the creation of problem‐focused interagency centers that are intended to enhance the sharing and integration of information within the intelligence community. These conclusions about redesigning the structure of the intelligence community are based on the arguments of Luther Gulick on methods of departmentalization and Martin Landau on redundancy and system reliability.