David Stebbins

This report assesses U.S. efforts in defense institution building (DIB) in Africa and suggests possible improvements to planning and execution. It defines DIB and reviews some best practices from DIB and security sector reform experiences. It also highlights how DIB activities serve U.S. official strategic guidance for Africa.

This report addresses the differences between research and intelligence analysis, what intelligence research has been and should be done, and how the National Intelligence University can make research contributions to the U.S. Intelligence Community.

National security workforce applicants must provide detailed personal information for the background investigation to adjudicate their security clearance eligibility. The authors aim to identify elements that could contribute to bias and sources of inequity in the personnel vetting process for sensitive federal positions. These factors could inhibit the U.S. government's goals to hire personnel with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

The U.S. government will need to proactively recruit, hire, screen, onboard, and provide continuous career-growth opportunities-and provide an exceptional candidate experience-to attract and retain new generations to the national security workforce. This report explores how security, suitability, and credentialing mechanisms might benefit from a formalized candidate experience strategy and framework to create a more positive vetting experience.

The authors examined how U.S. government vetting processes and procedures could be enhanced by application of mobile technologies and platforms for the Security, Suitability, and Credentialing Performance Accountability Council Program Management Office. The research team identified key mobile platform and security factors to consider when communicating with and screening candidates and describe relevant private-sector practices.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is considering additional steps to improve its resource-management processes and asked the RAND Corporation to examine NGA's resource programming process. RAND focused on what changes were made, why changes were made, and what the results were, and made recommendations for improving the next evolution of this process.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Directorate of Intelligence sought RAND Corporation assistance in developing a repeatable process to measure the effectiveness of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations to evaluate current performance and plan for, influence, and resource future operations. The authors identified measures of effectiveness and of performance to gauge the value and success of ISR support and requirements.

To help inform the U.S. government in its efforts to improve the vetting processes for public trust and national security positions and protect its assets and information, the authors assembled a selected bibliography of relevant literature. The bibliography is organized into 13 categories, each containing a short summary and analysis of the respective literature, and it also examines the practices of the Five Eyes community partners.

This exploratory project examines various continuous evaluation approaches to detecting insider threats that are available to the U.S. government and assesses the relevance of these approaches to the challenges posed by such insider threats. There are potential benefits in effectiveness and cost over the current method of granting security clearances to personnel based on periodic reinvestigation and readjudication.

The RAND Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism uses checklists, worksheets, and templates to help program staff design an evaluation that is appropriate for their program type, resources, and expertise and offers guidance on analyzing the resulting data to inform improvements. This report is a companion to the toolkit and provides background on its development and testing.

Many service members join (affiliate with) the Reserve Component (RC) after leaving the Regular Army (RA). Attracting prior service personnel to the RC allows the Army to retain valuable military experience. This report combines quantitative and qualitative methods to understand service member decisions upon exiting the RA: to join the RC or not; to join the U.S. Army Reserve versus the Army National Guard; and the timing of their affiliation.

This report addresses the challenge of creating a U.S. Department of Defense wide (DoD-wide) system for security cooperation assessment, monitoring, and evaluation (AME) by (1) analyzing existing planning and AME principles, processes, and practices inside and outside DoD and (2) presenting a conceptual framework that explains how AME methods might be applied, integrated, and implemented by major security cooperation organizations."

This report presents an analysis of a range of defense institution building (DIB) programs and activities, recommends a set of goals and objectives for achieving them, identifies partner nation and DIB activity selection criteria, develops a strategy for coordinating DIB activities, and recommends procedures for achieving accountability and assessment.

Aid flowing into Syria is intended to determine the outcome of the conflict between rebel factions and Damascus. Instead, it could perpetuate the civil war and ignite larger regional hostilities that could reshape the political geography of the Middle East. This report examines the main factors likely to contribute to or impede the spread of violence from civil war and insurgency in Syria, and then examines how they apply to neighboring states.