DHS Perspective: Jeffrey Brownsweiger
Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the Intelligence Training Division and Acting Director of the DHS Intelligence Training Academy
Jeffrey Brownsweiger brings an important and unique perspective on workforce development within DHS given his long tenure there. The retired Navy officer has served the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis for 17 years; DHS, created in the wake of 9/11, is not quite 20 years old. Brownsweiger has seen the Department strive to become more cohesive, professional, and responsive across myriad mission sets. His career and current role have focused on training in support of those goals. Brownsweiger works to make the DHS workforce even stronger, sharper, and more innovative than it already is.
Note: Edited for clarity and length
Q: First order of business: DHS is a 240,000-person, 22-component machine — one of the largest federal agencies in the nation, with mission sets as varied as border patrol, emergency response, and Secret Service. Give us an idea of the challenge of working together.
A: DHS is a very dynamic organization, with broad missions, authorities, and responsibilities. We have components that have existed for hundreds of years and others less than 20 years. The DHS Intelligence Training Academy (ITA) is one of the recent additions to the Department. It works to support the developmental needs of the intelligence workforce. Our efforts help improve standardization and quality in intelligence operations. We work closely with the existing DHS cadre of intelligence training professionals across the Department's components to create a common understanding of DHS intelligence capabilities and to develop the skills to support DHS intelligence and operational missions. This approach improves collaboration and allows DHS components to increase awareness of their missions.
Q: Has the forcing function of the pandemic, by moving work remotely, made for more streamlined activity?
A: The pandemic has had a major impact on our ability to continue to deliver intelligence training. The DHS ITA worked quickly to mitigate the impacts by converting existing course content to virtual or online training courses. The DHS ITA received two Intelligence Community (IC) training awards for their efforts. A positive outcome of this initiative was improved accessibility to DHS intelligence training; however, this modality does not replace the need for classroom skills development. Moving forward, virtual training will continue to play a major role in the development of the intelligence workforce. The challenge facing DHS intelligence will be achieving the correct balance between in-person and virtual training. We are currently managing a waitlist for several courses.
Q: Broadly, what are workforce development needs?
A: The DHS Intelligence workforces in each of the components have similar developmental needs to Intelligence Community and law enforcement organizations. The challenge DHS intelligence training programs face is our need to work together to reduce duplication and to be more interoperable across the Department. We have established a governance structure that allows us to work closely together and to improve efficiencies in how we use our training resources. Although several DHS components have established intelligence training facilities to support their needs, their ability to leverage the existing DHS ITA training content saves time and money and improves standardization and quality across the department. In this way, we work together to leverage capabilities and capacities and establish common standards achieving greater efficiencies.
Q. What are some concrete needs for the current workforce?
A: The DHS intelligence workforce is very diverse. DHS intelligence workers represent all areas of the country and bring with them many unique experiences. The DHS intelligence training works to establish a common baseline for the DHS intelligence workforce, to standardize the approach for ensuring all personnel understand and have access to developmental opportunities that create the knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed as a DHS intelligence professional. We have career paths to guide supervisors and employees to create individual development plans (IDP) that structure annual career development planning. These tools formalize the importance of continuous development across an intelligence career. Without them we find operational needs can marginalize individuals’ developmental needs.
As we move forward, DHS continues to identify additional skill sets to be added into the DHS intelligence workforce. We can no longer satisfy all our requirements by leveraging IC agencies' capabilities and capacities. As we mature as a Department, we will need to plan more strategically to create the training programs needed by the Department. Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT), Open-Source intelligence (OSINT), and Data Analytics each have been identified new requirements.
Q: What ideas do you have for solutions?
A: A longer, more cohesive onboarding process to help new employees not only understand the various components in DHS but also build relationships with people in them for future collaboration. We need more in-house, mixed-component professional networks to reduce “stovepipes” where people don’t get to interact cross-component.
Q: What challenges do you see in mission sets?
A: The DHS missions are not static and continue to evolve over time. Our adversaries continue to work to exploit the homeland through whatever means necessary to achieves their objectives, and we need to prepare to meet these challenges and threats. The Department needs to consider what the operational environment will look like in the future and determine whether our current capabilities are sufficient. If gaps are identified, new capabilities, tools, or other means need to be developed to mitigate the threat.
Q: What can COEs like NCITE do to help build the future DHS workforce?
A: The DHS COE research portfolios are an important part of the Department’s ability to gain new insights and perspectives on issues impacting the Homeland. Your ability to help the Department to understand new approaches to our missions, to see through and anticipate the challenges we may face, and to make better decisions, is critical to our success.
In addition to the DHS COE research portfolios, I believe there needs to be a larger percentage of DHS COE students represented in the DHS workforce. Advocating for and increasing student internships in DHS is an important part of that equation. I see the student experience in NCITE research supporting improvements in the DHS workforce. NCITE students who have the benefit of experiencing the Department through an internship allows them to better understand and align their NCITE experiences to the DHS reality. Internships in the Department also help the student to better understand how DHS safeguards the Homeland and to be more aware of career opportunities in the Department.
Q: How can NCITE help?
NCITE plays an important part in understanding the operational challenges DHS intelligence faces to develop a workforce to support Departmental needs. Our missions are many and the operational environment is continually changing. The NCITE research projects play an important role in our efforts to understand as the mission space evolves how the Department can make more informed decisions to mitigate the impacts.