Centralization of Fiscal Management is Not Necessary

Dr. Odom, a retired Lt. General and former Director of the National Security Agency, discusses the current ineffectiveness of the U.S. Intelligence community in his book Fixing Intelligence. He recommends major structural reforms by centralizing intelligence collection management, creating a national manager for each of the four collection disciplines and creating a Director of Central Intelligence at the hub. Odom, however, does not recommend giving fiscal authority to the DCI or centralizing the intelligence community budget. On the surface withholding fiscal authority from the DCI does not appear to be a logical recommendation. How can the Director of Central Intelligence direct the intelligence community if he does not have fiscal authority? This essay will explain why his recommendation is not only valid, but also necessary in the implementation of his proposals.

Odom explains that several congressional oversight committees have desired to give the DCI control of the intelligence community budget. Creating a single administrator for the execution of the budget appears to simplify the committee’s responsibilities by funneling all resources through one office and holding only one person accountable for budget management. Dr. Odom counters this idea and states that centralization “would be a cure far worse that the disease.” Overlapping budgets and turf battles between the DCI and military managers would ensue, creating confusion and making accountability difficult to assign.

Another point of confusion in centralizing the intelligence community budget at the national level is the nature of some of the collection assets. Many assets have dual roles such as infantry soldiers that also report battle damage assessments or anti-aircraft radar, which targets enemy planes in a tactical setting and also reports technical intelligence to strategic analysts. Drawing the budgetary line between what is intelligence related and what is not will create disorder and lead to military officers’ resentment of the DCI.

On balance, Dr. Odom dismisses the suggestion of centralization of the fiscal authority of the intelligence community budget in a single national office. On the contrary, he advocates budget autonomy within each collection discipline, arguing that centralization of the budget gives the DCI and Collection Management Staff no way to judge the effectiveness of resource allocation. Odom proposes that national collection managers are in a better position to present a case for their respective budgets before congress. He does not naively suggest that this structural change will solve issues of ineffective management. In fact, he apprises the reader concerning the rivalry of budgets that will likely occur in Congress among different disciplines is probably harmful to the system, for the reason that history shows government organizations often judge their successes by the size of their budgets. Odom qualifies his suggestion by clarifying the problem in relation to competition, calling it a management problem, not a structural one.

Notwithstanding Odom’s advocacy of structural reform, it is possible to resolve what appears to be a contradiction in his method. Centralization of the budget above the collection managers, in Odom’s opinion, is counterproductive to their roles and despite the inherent issues with budget execution, he concludes that budget autonomy within national collection management, while not ensuring efficiency, makes efficiency possible.