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(U//FOUO) A&P Taking More Coordinated Approach Toward Foreign
Affairs
FROM: Dan Ennis
Analysis & Production Group Chief/ TransNational Issues
Run Date: 04/03/2006
(U//FOUO) SID leaders travel to Germany to confer with SIGINT Liaison Officers.
(U//FOUO) On 14-16 March 2006, Carl Johnson and I attended the annual SIGINT Liaison Officer
(SLO) Conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. If you're not aware, NSA has a SLO in many of our
Third Party countries acting as the front-line representative in managing those partnerships for
NSA. While the depth of these partnerships may vary, the challenges each of the SLOs faces are
often similar, and this conference provides an opportunity for them to share problems and
solutions and engage Agency seniors for relevant insight.
(U//FOUO) It is no secret that NSA has aggressively sought to expand these partnerships to help
in the War on Terrorism and to address continued mission needs against other, more traditional,
targets as well. It is the recognition of the critical mission role that SLOs play in leveraging such
partnerships that led Carl to gladly accept an invitation to attend the conference this year.
(U//FOUO) SLOs, for the most part, are not connected to NSANet, so many conference
attendees had questions about issues like Transformation, Turbulence, and the new budgetary
"Lane" construct. As such, Gary Grantham, the Foreign Affairs Director and Jim Cusick, the
Deputy Director of SID (acting), spent a great deal of time reviewing the current state of play on
these and other strategic issues of import. The SLOs, however, had just as many questions
about A&P, with particular interest in the current status of Mission Alignment, the relative roles
of GCs, GCMs and PPCMs* and, perhaps most importantly, changes that A&P was pursuing in
the Foreign Affairs (FA) arena.
(U//FOUO) With this in mind, Carl (SID/Deputy Director for A&P) focused his discussion on the
critical role of GCMs in managing their enterprise-wide mission, including the role they play in
leveraging foreign partnerships. My presentation focused on moving partners, as appropriate, up
the reference model (pushing them to provide analysis, not just bits of information) and
providing insight into the new processes that A&P is putting in place to guide the development of
such relationships.
(U//FOUO) Given their role in partner engagement and given their relative lack of connectivity
back to NSA, it was clear that SLOs want more insight into the overarching intent/strategy that
A&P and SID have with any given partner. To be blunt, they want to see coordinated A&P
positions with regard to each partnership and timely (and fully informed) A&P
answers to partner questions and inquiries. We believe the new A&P FA processes we are
instituting will help address these needs.
(U//FOUO) We discussed the new processes and the Foreign Affairs Management Board ( FAMB )
at length, advising that our goal is to facilitate cross-target strategy development and decision
making, with the intent that A&P mission priorities drive the strategy with each partner. In this
regard we again stressed the role of the GCMs, with specific emphasis on the role that individual
GCM representatives will play in the FA virtual team construct.
(U//FOUO) We left them with some of our own "care-abouts" as well, namely the need to
manage partner expectations, provide a clear picture of partner capabilities and future
opportunities, and arm us with a true picture of the partners long-term interests to facilitate our
own decision making. In short, they fully welcomed the additional rigor that A&P is
adding to the FA process. They also clearly appreciated the investment that we made in
traveling to Germany to represent A&P and SID interests. For my part, I enjoyed the frequent
sidebar discussions on partner issues, especially as these serve to inform how we press ahead in
developing processes to enable more effective partner engagement. Then again, I also enjoyed
the bratwurst almost as much.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108