Rick Ledgett: NSA's '21' Reorg Move Eyes Worker-Focused Approach

The National Security Agency‘s ongoing reorganization program aims to integrate its team into a single enterprise that continues cryptography as the core focus, NSA’s second-ranked official told the Potomac Officers Club Wednesday.

Rick Ledgett said goals of “NSA21” initiative announced in February are to give its workforce opportunities to advance in careers through reductions of bureaucratic hurdles.

“If we took out every machine I could replace it in five years… but I would never replace the intellectual capital from scratch, ” Ledgett said at the POC’s 2016 Intel Summit.

Competition for talent with the private sector factored into NSA’s move toward the reorganization and the agency is working with the Office of Personnel Management on recruitment initiatives, Ledgett said.

NSA21 also seeks in tandem to bring more technologies from industry but the agency is challenged by the pace of new tool creations that often reduces the lifecycle time to no more than two years, according to Ledgett.

“We’re into buying small stuff in an open source model without a vendor lock-in, ” Ledgett said.

Ledgett used an analogy often-repeated by hockey legend Wayne Gretzky to describe his vision for how NSA brings in future generations of workers and technological tools.

“I want us to skate to where the puck is going, not where it is right now.”

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