Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 97

The Challenge of Evaluating and Testing Critical Thinking in Potential Intelligence Analysts
posing us to more people and ideas and
to colossal amounts of open-source resources
with more data to sift through,
synthesize, and evaluate. While technological
advances are being made to
data-mine these large datasets, data
analytics is reliant on the human capability
to decode, evaluate, and make
inferences so that priorities can be set
and decisions and recommendations
can be made. Humans think critically;
machines process and sift.
Yet, employers in the intelligence
community (IC) have been concerned
about the critical thinking capabilities
of millennial and Gen Z IAs, which
have been compounded by intelligence
challenges. The IC has had many issues
with both training and framework that
began to be voiced in the 1990s by intelligence
experts and were followed by a
series of intelligence reforms after 9/11.
The initial solution was the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
of 2004, which created the Director of
National Intelligence (DNI). This act
also had the goals of information sharing
and created analytic standards, including
the IC directives (ICDs) 203
and 610, which forced a critical evaluation
of the foundational skills needed
for IAs and set a benchmark for performance
standards in the IC.
Both directives spell out the
hard and soft skills needed for twenty-first
century IAs. ICD 203 outlines
the core principles, assessment criteria,
and deliverables for providing analytic
rigor and personal integrity to analytic
practice. ICD 610 captures the core
competencies needed for GS-15 civilian
employees. These groundbreaking
directives come at a time when experts
and agencies have stated that post-9/11
US analytical capabilities and human
and technical procedures need to be
repaired and replaced to respond to
twenty-first-century threats, including
the weaponization of information.
Meanwhile, the IC and the education
community have been debating how
critical thinking and the foundation of
social science methodology should be
taught in bridging the gap from student
or active duty military to government
analyst.
While ICDs 610 and 203 provide
benchmarks, this leaves employers in
the IC struggling to find ways to hire
IAs with core competencies that meet
these standards and to train their current
workforce. Employers have to fill
in the gaps in the educational experience
that many of their employees received
in secondary and academic environments.
Additionally, the generalist
vs. the specialist debate of how critical
thinking skills are learned further dilute
a clear and pragmatic approach to addressing
the challenge of fostering critical
thinking.
One approach for employers is
testing a potential employee’s critical
thinking skill base as part of the hiring
process; however, identifying appropriate
critical thinking measurements can
be daunting and expensive. Also, one
option is to address the current employees’
lack of skillset with tutorials,
but before tutorials can be designed,
current employees must be tested for
their skill levels.
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