Ensuring language capability in the intelligence community : what is the best mix of military, civilians, and contractors? / Beth J. Asch, John D. Winkler
Introduction -- DoD guidance for determining workforce mix -- Literature review on the costs and benefits of different categories of personnel -- Insights from interviews -- Exploratory analysis of the relative cost-effectiveness of military versus civilian language-pro¬cient workforces -- Summary and concluding thoughts -- Appendix A: Details on DoD guidance of workforce mix -- Appendix B: Qualitative analysis approach -- Appendix C: Quantitative research approach
Summary
Language capability is provided in the intelligence community by military personnel, government civilians, and contractors. A key question is what is the best mix of these three types of personnel in terms of cost and effectiveness. This research draws on U.S. Department of Defense guidance and the economics and defense manpower literatures to provide a framework for broadly assessing the costs and benefits of different sources of personnel to provide a given capability, including language capabilities. The authors interviewed personnel at the National Security Agency/Central Security Service and conducted an exploratory quantitative analysis to identify the factors that may affect the best mix of language capability in the intelligence community. A key finding is that each category of personnel provides unique advantages and belongs in the IC language workforce but that a number of factors lead to civilians being a more cost-effective source of language capability than military personnel, even after accounting for the flow to the civil service of trained veterans with language capability. Policies that reduce language-training costs for military personnel and increase the flow of veterans to the civil service might help reduce this disparity
Notes
"RAND National Defense Research Institute."
"This research was ... conducted within the Intelligence Policy Center and the Forces and Resources Policy Center of RAND's National Defense Research Institute"--Preface
