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consider a primary briefer or a rotation of briefers from other IC elements. Additionally, the entirety of the PDB staff and production should be located at ODNI.

National Intelligence Council (NIC). The National Intelligence Council is the IC’s premier analytic organization and includes more than a dozen National Intelligence Officers (NIOs), each of whom leads the IC’s analysis within a regional (China, Russia, Iran, etc.) or functional (cyber, counterproliferation, economics, etc.) mission area. This includes authoring National Intelligence Estimates on major strategic issues with the entire IC, overseeing and deconflicting the annual analytic plans of each agency, and weighing in on day-to-day major analytical issues, sometimes individually (for example, by writing the NIC’s strategic memos or providing detailed expert briefings to the President before major decisions).

Historically part of the CIA, the NIC was reorganized into the ODNI as was the PDB. It retains the CIA’s objective analytic culture and is staffed primarily with CIA officers; however, as many as 25 percent of its NIOs over the decades have come from academia or the private sector, bringing in much-needed outside expertise to collate and understand intelligence with perspective and skills that are not necessarily nurtured within the IC. In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis on encouraging officers from other agencies—particularly the DIA, NSA, and FBI—to serve as NIOs or as their deputies.

To encourage greater analytic independence and debate, the incoming Administration should require that non-CIA officers comprise at least 50 percent of the NIC’s membership and that the first-among-equals NIC Chairman is an outsider from one of the three major IC agencies with reporting responsibility to the PDDNI. Opening these senior analytic roles to the best analysts regardless of agency would also encourage the continued maturation of analytic cadres and tradecraft at those agencies and give them an equal voice in interagency analytical disputes, which in turn would give the President access to the best thinking and a variety of sources and perspectives from across the entire IC rather than from the CIA alone.

IC Chief Information Officer. The Intelligence Community Chief Information Officer (CCIO) directs and oversees all aspects of the classified IT budget for all of the IC’s 18 elements. As the DNI’s principal adviser for technology, the ICCIO must be well-versed in technology, acquisitions, operations, and intra-agency cooperation to advance our technical prowess and simultaneously direct a bureaucracy that, left unchecked, will serve each element’s own preferences. To ensure that procured and implemented technology and policy reflect the Administration’s agenda, the ICCIO must have the support of the DNI and possess the ability to command cooperation between and promote interoperability across IC members.

Because of the unique responsibilities entrusted to this position, incumbency has seesawed between political appointees and career civilians; due to its congressionally capped salary, the position is often filled by an SES-level member administratively detailed to support the DNI. At times, the ICCIO is incorrectly