Like any major organization, a spy service must constantly endeavor to improve. But unlike most other industries, learning from competitors is not that easy in the spy business. After all, organizational methodology and operational tactics are some of an intelligence service’s most closely guarded secrets.
But there are two human-intelligence focused spy agencies can learn from each other: the CIA and its British equivalent agency, the Secret Intelligence Service. With many shared interests, these two services work together to define the special relationship between the two countries. Only the NSA and its British equivalent, GCHQ work more closely together. Thanks to that trust, the two services have the ability to scrutinize each other for their own improvement.
For a start, the SIS could learn from the CIA’s recent focus on expanding its workforce diversity. While the SIS is focusing more on the espionage benefits of this diversity, it should copy the CIA and appoint a diversity-lead who has open-door access to the SIS chief Alex Younger. Doing so would emphasize diversity not just as an institutional priority but as a mission necessity.
But the CIA could also learn from the SIS in the area of recruiting.
Consider that the SIS is more practical and speedier than the CIA in offering a candidate a post-clearance employment contract. Rather than keeping candidates waiting for a year or more like the CIA, the SIS keeps its hiring timelines around six months. This reduces the probability of the best applicants taking other jobs while they wait for a final decision.
Part of the CIA’s problem here is that it lacks enough investigators to complete background-clearance checks in short order. Yet that only speaks to another SIS difference that the CIA could embrace: putting less reliance on polygraph tests. SIS does not use polygraphs in its hiring process because the tests can produce false positives and individuals affected by concerns such as obsessive-compulsive disorder can struggle to pass them. This is not to say that polygraphs cannot serve a valuable purpose, but it’s worth recognizing that they sometimes inadvertently screen out loyal and honorable candidates.
The CIA would also benefit by offering critical-skill waivers for operations officer applicants who lack college degrees but could contribute high value service. SIS expands its talent pool by allowing candidates who have not completed college degrees to apply for intelligence officer positions. This might, for example, mean an accomplished entrepreneur who set up a company and has garnered significant foreign contacts. Or perhaps a journalist who went straight from high school into freelancing abroad.
Another possibility would be for the CIA to replicate recent SIS efforts to make it easier for those born abroad or of foreign parentage to apply for its positions. Too many CIA officers are white and thus not terribly predisposed to blending in with foreign populations beyond Europe. CIA recruiters should be given small quotas from these demographics for referrals to CIA interviews.
What can the CIA teach the SIS in recruiting terms? Offering employees better starting salaries, more diverse career options and a better provision of services for family members.
Beyond that, the British government could learn from the U.S. government and resource the SIS more extensively. At present the SIS’ comparatively small budget means it cannot match the CIA, Chinese or Russian services in scaled staffing, capability and operational activity. That requires the SIS senior leadership team to constantly shuffle resources in pursuit of evolving requirements from London. Recognizing the complexity and range of threats facing the U.K. the British government should reallocate $1-2 billion from its large foreign development budget and transfer that money to the SIS.
The SIS can similarly learn from the CIA at the analytical stage of the intelligence cycle. While the SIS does retain a cadre of “reports officers” (its version of intelligence analysts), SIS’ organizational focus remains heavily orientated towards the “production officers” who collect intelligence in the field. The problem here is that without a well-resourced analytical wing to corroborate and compile intelligence into deliverable products, intelligence material has less reliable value.
Yet there are opportunities for SIS in lieu of scale. Contrasting the large “stations” that define CIA outposts in foreign embassies abroad, foreign assignment SIS officers work more closely with their Foreign Office diplomatic colleagues than CIA officers do with their State Department colleagues. This doesn’t mean diplomats regularly joining espionage operations but the more eyes, ears and knowledge you have in a foreign nation, the more potential you have to collect valuable intelligence.
As an extension, the CIA and its domestic counterpart, the FBI could also learn from SIS’ close relationship with its domestic counterpart, MI5. Working together more seamlessly than the CIA and FBI, British intelligence services speed up their ability to match up the disparate pieces of intelligence puzzles. This is especially useful in international counterterrorism work and dealing with aggressive foreign intelligence services such as those of Russia.
Ultimately though there is much that these two very fine services can learn from each other. They should endeavor to do so with more energy.
