{"id":34389,"date":"2017-09-25T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T20:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=34389"},"modified":"2017-09-24T12:29:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T02:29:58","slug":"oz-intelligence-review-the-new-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-intelligence-review-the-new-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Oz intelligence review: the new community"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018With an annual budget approaching $2 billion and about 7,000 staff spread across 10 agencies, it is clear to us that on size alone the Australian Government\u2019s intelligence activities supporting national security are now a major enterprise. They would benefit from being managed as such.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 Michael L\u2019Estrange and Stephen Merchant, 2017 Independent Intelligence Review<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the intelligence community that grew. More money. More agencies. More expansion still to come.<\/p>\n

Even the \u2018community\u2019 nomenclature has expanded to embrace all the collectors and analysts, cops and lawyers, spooks and spies, cyber nerds and cyber warriors, diplomats and accountants, mappers and managers …<\/p>\n

Consider the move from six agencies to 10. The original six were\/are known as the \u2018Australian Intelligence Community\u2019: the Office of National Assessments, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation.<\/p>\n

The stretch means there\u2019s now a broader \u2018National<\/em> Intelligence Community\u2019, comprising the founding six and the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. There may have to be a recount\/rethink, though, because of the 18 July<\/a> announcement that the government will establish a Home Affairs department to provide \u2018strategic planning, coordination and other support to [the] \u201cfederation\u201d of independent security and law enforcement agencies\u2019.<\/p>\n

When the Home Affairs portfolio is born next year, the heritage usage of Robert Hope\u2019s<\/a> \u2018Australian Intelligence Community\u2019 will give way to the \u2018National\u2019 moniker. Perhaps the \u2018community\u2019 usage will morph towards \u2018enterprise\u2019. The L\u2019Estrange\u2013Merchant review used \u2018enterprise\u2019 to express the expansion of the intelligence domain\u2014confronted by threats and embracing larger purposes and interests.<\/p>\n

The dollars always tell much. In 2000, the combined budget of the six agencies in the Oz intelligence community was $325 million. By 2010, the figure was $1,070 million. What gets used gets rewarded\u2014and expands. Today it\u2019s a bigger beast, costing $2 billion.<\/p>\n

The L\u2019Estrange\u2013Merchant review says that threats and challenges<\/a> drive the growth: \u2018Australia\u2019s evolving national security environment is fundamentally changing the way in which Australia\u2019s intelligence agencies need to operate. It is creating new imperatives for more effective integration and synergies among agencies.\u2019<\/p>\n

The ground is shifting and Oz structures have to shift. Yet in growing they must draw closer together. The challenge is to keep what\u2019s valuable while getting better management of a bigger enterprise. That value point was made by the former US director of national intelligence, James Clapper<\/a>, in commenting on the L\u2019Estrange\u2013Merchant review:<\/p>\n

If Australia made no changes to its intelligence posture, it would still have a very competent, professional intelligence community. I have worked with the Australian intelligence community for over 30 years in many capacities, and I can attest to its maturation, sophistication, and tremendous capabilities of Australian intelligence. In the intelligence space, the United States does things with Australia that we do not do with any other ally.<\/p>\n

Coming from a different direction in 2014, former Labor defence minister John Faulkner<\/a> also praised what the Oz intelligence community has done, while warning about the dangers of growth:<\/p>\n

In recent years, Australia has benefited from professional and well run intelligence and security agencies; respecting the parliament, the government of the day and our laws. But effective safeguards against the abuse of security powers cannot depend on the personal integrity and quality of the leaders of our agencies. It is the responsibility of Parliament to prescribe safeguards that keep pace with the expansion of security powers.<\/p>\n

The challenge in implementing the L\u2019Estrange\u2013Merchant recommendations will be to retain the characteristics that make the community valuable while altering it to make it a more joined-up and coherent enterprise.<\/p>\n

Allan Gyngell<\/a> poses the community-to-enterprise problem this way: \u2018Will they preserve the critical distinction between intelligence and policy, so that the products of intelligence collection and assessment aren\u2019t distorted by policy and politics?\u00a0Probably, but there are dangers here.\u2019<\/p>\n

The review spends a lot of space wrestling with various dimensions of these conundrums. For instance, it discusses the shifting balance between \u2018strategic intelligence\u2019 and \u2018actionable intelligence\u2019. Australia, like its allies, is going to want more \u2018actionable intelligence\u2019. In meeting that demand, the risk is that the immediate drives out the long term. Responsiveness has risks. Ministers always want answers, not intelligence community musings on the difference between solvable puzzles and impenetrable mysteries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The central thought of the review is the need for a greater whole-of-community intelligence structure in Canberra. Michael L\u2019Estrange calls it a \u2018stronger centre\u2019. He invokes the familiar language of tackling agency silos and stove-pipes\u2014create a stronger heart at the centre of the federal structure of Oz intelligence agencies. Here is Michael L\u2019Estrange in the last of the five ASPI interviews.<\/p>\n

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