Overcoming Inertia: Building Human Capital for Interagency Success

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Numerous studies have concluded that the United States Government needs more people who are competent at working across traditional agency boundaries. However, not everyone has agreed upon the best method for developing this necessary ‘human capital.’ In order to supply such a method, this paper analyzes past work, investigates ongoing efforts, and develops various models to boost the number of interagency specialists. The conclusion is that the government should adopt a phased approach to its problem. In the short-term phase, the government needs to build upon current human capital initiatives that show promise, protecting these efforts from endless attempts to refine them. Current programs could be broadened without dulling their effectiveness, enabling the government to generate human capital until its second phase matures. This second, longer-term phase should be the development of a truly independent corps of interagency experts, essentially a new bureaucratic structure within the government, in accordance with the recent recommendations of the Project on National Security Reform. The combination of these two phases should alleviate much of the friction plaguing the government, leading to greater interagency effectiveness, both abroad and at home.