Blog Post #1: The Australian National Intelligence Community and Strategy

A key purpose of threat assessments is to inform strategy, plans and operations about the capability and intent of actual or potential adversaries. However, threat assessments are only one of many analytical products developed by an intelligence community that is designed, built, developed, and maintained to fulfil its roles and functions as part of the national security architecture. Such a community is large, broad, complicated, and complex and therefore needs strategy to ensure it is appropriately resourced, organised, and focussed to achieve its objectives.

This article will discuss intelligence strategy, specifically, the requirement for an Australian National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) for the Australian National Intelligence Community (NIC).

In Lawrence Freedman’s magnum opus on strategy – simply titled Strategy – his very first sentences are both powerful and illuminating:

Before I address the matter of a NIS, I’ll first address what strategy is. While there is no single definition of what strategy is, the Australian Defence Force currently defines strategy as:

This is not a bad starting point. During my military career, a model for formulating strategy was summarised as ‘ends, ways, and means’. The ends are your desired end state which much be clearly defined. The ways are the courses of action on how the end state is to be achieved. The means are the resources you need to achieve your end state (for example, people, money, and equipment). Defining the desired end state is always the first and most important part of the strategy process; for as Franklin Covey says, you need to ‘begin with the end in mind.’ Then strategies must be led, monitored, and adjusted where necessary as things change or opportunities arise.

In December 2018, as recommended by the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review, the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) was formed out of the Office of National Assessments and the six member Australian Intelligence Community (AIC) was increased to the 10-member National Intelligence Community (NIC). ONI’s website states that a ‘key ONI mandate is to lead and manage Australia's intelligence enterprise; to draw together the resources of the ten NIC agencies, foster collaboration, innovate, and harness the strengths of a diverse and highly skilled workforce.’

The enterprise leadership of its 10 members requires a strong strategic approach, but over four years later, there is still no published NIS to shape the NIC, galvanise it into action, and guide its progress towards its end state.

In Australia, there appear to be three phenomena when it comes to intelligence strategy.

First, there is a very high reliance on the five yearly independent intelligence reviews conducted in 2004, 2011 and 2017 to deliver the catalyst for change to the NIC, and even provide the ‘strategy’ to the NIC, which is to be executed over the ensuing five-year period. Each review has included a series of recommendations that are then almost always implemented as a ‘to do’ list. There has never been a recommendation for a NIC-wide strategy. While Australia appears to have the ‘ways’ in terms of various tasks and initiatives, and the ‘means’ in terms of budget allocations, the ‘ends’ have not been so clear.

The second phenomenon to understand when it comes to intelligence strategy is that strategy is often seen as a ‘corporate plan’, with vision and mission statements, and ‘key performance indicators’ (KPIs). All NIC agencies each have a public website which in turn contain a plethora of information regarding an agency’s history, structure, values, annual reports, executive remuneration, accountability, careers, and personnel information. Some publish a ‘corporate plan’ because it is required under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 – such as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). But only one has a published strategy – the Australian Geospatial-intelligence Organisation (AGO). But why does AGO have a strategy, when the other nine NIC agencies do not? Where is the NIS for AGO’s strategy to be nested?

The third phenomenon is that despite the creation of ONI and the formation of the NIC, key intelligence matters are still often ‘announced’ in somewhat ‘stove-piped’ ways which appear to contradict the purpose of the enterprise structure of the Community – which was, after all, the major outcome of the 2017 review. For example, the recent REDSPICE announcement is a significant one for ASD’s capabilities but how does it fit in with the rest of the NIC’s capabilities and desired end state?

The presence of a NIS would greatly assist such major capability enhancements by ensuring they are made in the context of a clear NIC end state, and that one part of the enterprise does not get ahead of the others, or even worse, fall behind.

So, the NIC appears to rely on the five-yearly independent intelligence reviews for much of its strategy; only one of its 10 agencies has published a strategy but there is no NIS for it to be nested within; and there still appear to be signs of stove-piped NIC capability decisions, despite a focus on the enterprise since 2017.

So where is the unifying strategy for the NIC? Australia is clearly capable of developing complex multi-organisational strategies such as the 2020 Cyber Security Strategy and 2022 Counter-Terrorism Strategy, so why doesn’t it have one for the NIC? I’ll explore what such a strategy may look like in my next post.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely my own and do not represent the views of any clients or employers.