Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency Reviews

Everything! Processes: There are always cons to being a part of a newly established agency. However, in the 3 years since its establishment, there seems to be absolutely no traction and progress towards creating policies and SOPs to govern the daily actions for most positions and career fields. As a fledgling organization, the focus to address mission and operations processes needs to be a higher priority. The onboarding process was a bit of a problem, if not for Government personnel most definitely for the contractors, taking an average of 3 months. Culture: The turnover rate is exceedingly high. DCSA cannot keep the new talent it attracts and can’t retain the talent it has. Great personnel are run off by the lack of communication, mission focus or even understanding the mission for that matter, empowerment, and horrible, incompetent leadership at the highest levels which only frustrates those who need to accomplish the work. Those who stay have significant reasons such as distance to home, telework policy, or completing probationary periods before moving on to name a few. Career field experience is disregarded based on your grade and position by those in management with no experience. Harassment, discrimination, misogyny, and nepotism are rampant at the higher supervisory levels. The morale is low. The frustration and stress are high. Environment: Chaos at its finest. This is tempered by the telework policy. Some of the facilities are new which is a plus. We reserve seating at the various facilities as necessary to work on site. There have been a few issues with plugging into the network on-site but nothing that couldn’t be fixed in 20-30 minutes. The Helpdesk is slow to resolve issues that can’t be addressed by Tier 1, possibly another problem caused by the staffing or available contract funding shortage. Communication: At local levels between many 1st line supervisors and their teams, communication is usually good. The communication from the upper echelons may be missing, confusing, or lacks the understanding of potential and/or realized impacts. We’ve endured the implementation of numerous big ideas that had an even bigger fallout. Additionally, there have several in management positions who are afraid to make decisions in a timely matter or at all causing a pileup of negative consequences. Also don’t be surprised if you come across leaders that value grade and position over experience. It has contributed to the SMEs refusing to speak up in meetings to offer valuable information. You may encounter a CYA communication style as a result. Workload: The workloads are ridiculous due to an inability to hire and retain talent. It’s hard to say if manning levels are adequate because we’ve never been fully staffed in the 2+ years I’ve been with DCSA. Expect to be overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated. Acknowledgement for efforts while working in an agency that is severely understaffed will not be forthcoming from upper echelons. I even had a leader who expected the directorate to work on their personal time but refused to offer comp time, credit hours, or overtime and then told us we were not team players and thinking about the mission. I would give them negative stars if that was an option. DCSA gets -10/10, would not recommend unless you’re accepting a promotion and have an exit plan after the 2-year probation period. If things change for the better, I will happily come back to write a better review.

Senior management living in a fantasy world of self-importance. Integrity not present in most executives, and problem personnel are rarely dealt with (so agency leadership doesn't become aware of issues). Management taking personal credit for everything positive that happens and blaming staff for negative things is the culture.