The 2024 Independent Intelligence Review dealing with Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC) will prepare findings and recommendations on the NIC and related issues, for completion in the first half of 2024.
The focus will be on the ten agencies of the NIC:
- Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission,
- Australian Federal Police,
- Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation,
- Australian Secret Intelligence Service,
- Australian Security Intelligence Organisation,
- Australian Signals Directorate,
- Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre,
- Defence Intelligence Organisation,
- Department of Home Affairs and
- the Office of National Intelligence).
The Review will consider:
- The impact of the implementation of the recommendations of the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review and the 2019 Comprehensive Review, including the benefits of the establishment of the Office of National Intelligence, the expansion to create the NIC, and the effectiveness and outcomes of the Joint Capability Fund;
- How effectively the NIC serves, and is positioned to serve, national interests and the needs of Government, including in response to the recommendations of recent reviews relevant to defence and security, and the evolving security environment;
- The status, risks and potential mitigations of major investments in the NIC since 2017;
- Topics identified by the 2019 Comprehensive Review for consideration by future reviews, and whether further legislative changes are needed;
- Whether workforce decisions by the NIC at both the agency and community levels reflect a sufficiently strategic response to current and future workforce challenges, anticipate future capabilities of other states so we are best positioned to counter threats, are in line with the Australian Public Service commitments to diversity and inclusion and offer options if recruitment targets cannot be met;
- NIC preparedness in the event of regional crisis and conflict;
- Whether the use of the classification system by the NIC achieves the right balance between protecting sensitive information and providing decision making advantages to policy makers and operators; and
- Whether current oversight and evaluation mechanisms are effective and consistent across the NIC.
The 2017 Review report stated
This Report sets out the conclusions we have drawn from an extensive, wide-ranging study of the Australian intelligence community conducted from November 2016 to June 2017. We engaged intensively with the leaders of Australia’s intelligence agencies. We also met with Ministers and Parliamentarians, with present and former members of the Australian and allied intelligence communities, and with senior officers of the operational and policy agencies that represent the primary customers of the intelligence agencies. Our Report draws heavily on the insights we derived from these meetings (which numbered over 150) and from our detailed analysis of the 34 Submissions we received from agencies and departments as well as the wider community.
It is clear to us that the Australian intelligence agencies are highly capable and staffed by skilled officers of great integrity. They have performed strongly since the most recent review of the intelligence community in 2011, particularly in the areas of counter-terrorism, support to military operations and assistance in addressing the issue of people smuggling. Our agencies have a strong positive culture of accountability under law and to responsible Ministers. Individually, the agencies feature world-class tradecraft and very high levels of professionalism. They are held in high regard by their international partner agencies.
A central theme of this Report is to provide a pathway to take those areas of individual agency excellence to an even higher level of collective performance through strengthening integration across Australia’s national intelligence enterprise. The aim is to turn highly capable agencies into a world-class intelligence community.
In our view, progress towards this objective will require changes to the co-ordinating structures of our intelligence community, new funding mechanisms to address capability gaps, the streamlining of some current legislative arrangements, and measures to further strengthen the state of trust between the intelligence agencies and the Australian community of which they are part. This Report addresses each of these priorities. Our national intelligence community is facing imposing challenges that, in our view, will intensify over the coming decade. Some of these challenges derive from new forms of rivalry and competition among states, the threat posed by extremism with global reach, particularly Islamist terrorism, and the implications of accelerating technological change for Australia’s national security outlook. Other challenges reflect the changing nature of twenty-first century intelligence, and especially the new frontiers of data-rich intelligence and the risks to comparative technical advantages.
These forces of change are challenging the structures in place for co-ordinating the activities of our intelligence agencies. Those structures were established some decades ago on the basis of principles set out in the landmark Royal Commissions into the intelligence agencies conducted by Mr Justice Hope in the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s. The clear dividing lines he highlighted – between foreign and security intelligence, intelligence and law enforcement, intelligence collection and assessment, and intelligence assessment and policy formulation – continue to provide the foundations of Australia’s intelligence community. We assess those delineations have broad enduring relevance. They capture, in particular, the essential requirements for a relationship of trust between government and the wider community in Australia about the legitimate uses of intelligence, and therefore the legal framework within which the agencies need to operate. At the same time, Australia’s future security environment will demand greater levels of collaboration across traditional dividing lines and more cross-over points.
The intelligence co-ordination arrangements recommended by Mr Justice Hope have undergone only minor change over the past 40 years. In our view, they need to reflect the contemporary and future challenges that our intelligence agencies face as a result of transforming geopolitical, economic, societal and technological changes.
We consider there are important conclusions Australia can draw from the recent experiences of our most important intelligence partners. All our Five Eyes partners have a single point of co-ordination for their intelligence communities. Australia’s co-ordination arrangements are not as clear.
The United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, have taken practical steps to build synergies among their agencies in response to the demands of twenty-first century intelligence. Australia is doing the same in particular areas but it needs to do much more. It is notable that both the United States and the United Kingdom took steps after the attacks of 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 respectively to strengthen the co-ordination and integration of their intelligence communities. They have continued to do so in the intervening period and the result in both countries is strong, strategic-level management of intelligence as a national enterprise built on the specific attributes of individual agencies. This has enhanced both effectiveness and efficiency, even against the tragic backdrop of terrorist attacks over recent years.
We strongly recommend that Australia learn from these experiences of our Five Eyes partners. We have not recommended that Australia simply replicate the measures our allies have taken, but rather we have sought to apply the principles to the Australian context in a way that is consistent with the Australian system of Ministerial responsibility and the statutory powers of agencies.
With an annual budget approaching $2 billion and about 7,000 staff spread across 10 agencies, it is clear to us that on size alone the Australian Government’s intelligence activities supporting national security are now a major enterprise. They would benefit from being managed as such. Our major recommendation is that an Office of National Intelligence (ONI) be established in the Prime Minister’s portfolio. This Office would be headed by a Director-General who would be the Prime Minister’s principal adviser on matters relating to the national intelligence community. The Director-General would not be empowered to direct the specific activities of agencies, but should be able to direct the co-ordination of the national intelligence community to ensure there are appropriately integrated strategies across the suite of agency capabilities.
ONI would be responsible for enterprise-level management of the national intelligence community, leading the development and implementation of national intelligence priorities, undertaking systematic and rigorous evaluation of the performance of the agencies, implementing strategic workforce planning and facilitating joint capability planning including for the development of an environment for enhanced data sharing and collaborative analysis. ONI would subsume the Office of National Assessments and undertake the intelligence assessment function in an expanded way that includes greater contestability and more extensive engagement with external expertise.
The theme of establishing strong, enterprise-level management of the national intelligence community to complement the strengths of individual agencies runs through our recommendations. It is particularly evident in our recommendations for new funding arrangements. A key recommendation we make in this context is to establish a Joint Capability Fund. This Fund would support technological innovation and the development of shared capabilities designed to be used across the different agencies of the national intelligence community. A further recommendation is to complement the Joint Capability Fund with a comprehensive, forward looking Intelligence Capability Investment Plan. This Plan would enable government to make better-informed decisions on the inevitable capability trade-offs that will be needed in future years, and to provide agencies with a greater degree of certainty about their future budgetary outlook to assist forward planning.
The theme of stronger integration also informs our recommendations on changes to the legislative framework in which the agencies operate, many of which are designed to create more cross-over points between agencies and to allow the full suite of Australia’s intelligence capabilities to be used more readily in support of national intelligence priorities.
In addition to the establishment of ONI, we also recommend a significant change to the structure of the intelligence community in regard to the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). This is presently within the Department of Defence, with the Director reporting to the Minister for Defence through a Deputy Secretary and the Secretary of the Department. Given its increased national responsibilities especially in relation to cyber security and also mindful of the critical operational capabilities it provides to the Australian Defence Force (ADF), we recommend that ASD become a statutory authority within the Defence portfolio. We also recommend that ASD’s priority role of supporting ADF capabilities be clearly reaffirmed and strengthened in new legislation. We further recommend that ASD’s legislative mandate be amended to explicitly recognise its national responsibilities for cyber security, including the provision of advice to the private sector, and that it take formal responsibility for the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
Our Report addresses current arrangements for oversight and accountability of the intelligence community. We consider that those arrangements are appropriately rigorous. They constitute a well-structured set of arrangements that provide independent assurance about the legality and propriety of intelligence operations and the management of resources. But the demands in this area are growing due to the increase in the size of the national intelligence community and the greater powers it has been given to address contemporary threats. Accordingly, we recommend that the remit of both the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security be expanded to cover the ten agencies which we consider now properly constitute the national intelligence community. We also recommend a significant strengthening of the Office of the IGIS through a substantial increase to its authorised staffing level. We further recommend an expanded set of functions for the Parliamentary Joint Committee.
In this Report, we have sought to identify likely strategic trends over the coming decade, to identify the issues they pose for our intelligence agencies and to make recommendations designed to address them. Those trends and issues will continue to evolve over coming years, and responses to them need to be kept under review.
We consider that Australia is well served by its intelligence agencies. But the challenges they face are significant and over coming years their capabilities, as well as the effectiveness of our intelligence community as a whole, will be significantly tested. The changes we recommend in this Report are designed to ensure that Australia is as well placed as it possibly can be to meet those challenges.
