Government Documents for You

The Project on National Security Reform and the Center for the Study of the Presidency has released their review of the national security interagency system. The report, "Forging a New Shield" is an 830 page document and is the result Sec. 1049 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 [PL 110-181]. This PL required a study of the national security interagency system by an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organization.

The members of the committee were unanimous in their sense that the national security of the US is fundamentally at risk. They analyze the problems, the causes, the consequences and proposed a set of reforms.

The report can be found at:
http://www.pnsr.org/data/files/pnsr_forging_a_new_shield_report.pdf

**Text taken from press release.**

Among the PNSR’s key recommendations are:

-Establishing a President’s Security Council to replace the National Security Council and Homeland Security.

-Creating an empowered Director for National Security in the Executive Office of the President.

-Initiating the process of shifting highly collaborative, mission-focused interagency teams for priority issues.

-Mandating annual National Security Planning Guidance and an integrated national security budget.

-Building an interagency personnel system, including a National Security Professional Corps.

-Establishing a Chief Knowledge Officer in the PSC Executive Secretariat to ensure that the national security system as a whole can develop, store, retrieve, and share knowledge.

-Forming Select Committees on National Security in the Senate and House of Representatives.

PNSR has determined the following problems with the current system:

-The system is grossly imbalanced, favoring strong departmental capabilities at the
expense of integrating mechanism.

-Executive Branch department and agencies are shaped by their narrowly defined core
mandates rather than by the requisites of broader national missions.

-The need for presidential integration to compensate for the systematic inability to
integrate or resource missions overly centralizes issues management and overburdens
the White House.

-A burdened White House cannot manage the national security system as a whole to be
agile and collaborative at any time, but it is particularly vulnerable to breakdown during
protracted transition periods between administrations.

-Congress provides resources and conducts oversight in ways that reinforce all these
problems and make improving performance extremely difficult.

PNSR Website: http://pnsr.org/index.asp

The press release and link to the executive summary can be found at:
http://www.pnsr.org/web/module/press/pressID/136/interior.asp

The preliminary finding report from July can be found at:
http://www.pnsr.org/data/images/pnsr%20preliminary%20findings%20july%202
008.pdf

Post on GovDoc-L from: Greta E. Marlatt, Information Services Manager & Homeland Security Digital Library Content Manager, Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School