Interagency coordination inadequate

The United States government has many talented employees with critical skills and expertise, but its departments and agencies don’t always work well together. Even when they share common interests and common goals, they often fail to coordinate effectively, if at all. This can cause agencies to duplicate efforts, or worse, to work at cross-purposes, which hardly makes the most of our resources to achieve our strategic objectives.

While not a new problem, the issue has lately taken on new urgency, particularly in the area of national security. The post-9/11 challenges that confront our nation — such as fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting terrorism and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — require strategies that embrace the capabilities of all government agencies. Unfortunately, eight years into the 21st century, our institutions and policies remain mired in Cold War doctrine.

The few existing mechanisms to bring together the federal departments that should play a role in developing national security policy and translating that policy into coordinated action are weak. These mechanisms are usually the ad hoc efforts of those directly engaged in the challenge of the moment, and not the result of a broader deliberative process. The experiences of U.S. service members and civilians working with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan are prime examples that show how interagency solutions can be forged by necessity in the field.  But there must be a better way — we shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time agencies need to join forces.

In historic testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed that interagency cooperation is absolutely essential. And they both made the point that many issues between their respective departments are resolved because the secretaries work well together — a fact that is understood by their staff. Although that reflects well on these public servants, it is unrealistic to expect that our nation will always have Cabinet officers in place who make it a priority to work well with each other. Until our government reforms the interagency process, we will continue to have problems.

In years past, Congress has led the way on similar monumental reform efforts. During the early 1980s, the House Armed Services Committee learned through testimony that our military services were dysfunctional when called upon to work together. It took four years of hearings and debate, but legislation to bring jointness to the operations of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps became law with the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986. Goldwater Nichols made fundamental changes to the culture of the military services, and the legislation faced strong institutional opposition, but today there is broad consensus that these reforms changed the Pentagon for the better.

Keeping in mind the lessons learned from these earlier efforts to promote military jointness, I believe we can make a success of interagency reform, but I am under no illusion that this will be easy. As with Goldwater Nichols, interagency reform will require significant cultural changes within federal departments. It will require budget coordination across agencies as well as the development of strategies that can be executed comprehensively. There must also be incentives to reward personnel who embrace opportunities to work in an interagency manner.

To jumpstart the interagency reform effort, Res. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and I offered an amendment to the fiscal 2009 National Defense Authorization Act. The Skelton-Berman-Lowey amendment would establish a 12-member advisory panel, modeled after the Defense Policy Board, which would analyze the roles and responsibilities of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) regarding stability operations and foreign assistance, including security assistance and whatever other areas the secretary of defense, secretary of state, and administrator of USAID determine could benefit from the panel’s attention. Controlled by and reporting directly to the secretaries, the advisory panel is a tool to help agency leaders do a better job dealing with interagency objectives.

Recent national security crises have exposed dangerous gaps in the interagency national security system that must be addressed.  With the prospect of a new administration next year, the time is right to seek practical solutions that can begin to build a culture of integration within the Defense and State departments and USAID. Interagency reform is a massive effort that cannot be accomplished in a single year, but it is a necessary step to improve how our country engages in national security issues.

Skelton is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.