There are a number of critical roles and responsibilities of Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who primarily reports to the President of the United States. These responsibilities include resolving major legal problems, strengthening the overall governance and leadership, and improving information sharing of the Intelligence Community. In regards to budget execution and financial management oversight, DNI’s most crucial role is in directing and managing financial resources in order to fund and IC systems and activities. In addition, he or she must be able to ensure that the financial resources are optimally used.
Director of National Intelligence is an official of the executive branch of the US federal government appointed by the President of the United States with the consent of the US Senate According to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the Director of National Intelligence reports to the President of the United States and acts as head of the US Intelligence Community (Richelson, 2015). He or she also serves as an adviser to the President of the United States, an adviser to the National Security Council, and an adviser to the Internal Security Council on intelligence matters related to the national (Richelson, 2015). This person directs the integration and implementation of the Intelligence Community Program.
The financial statements provided by DNI to Congress allow to make IC more auditable and responsible for the financial allocation of resources. This is a major improvement due to IC being highly challenging to make auditable. The latter factor is mainly linked with the secretiveness of the IC activities, and thus, revealing them in the form of an audit can be detrimental to the overall task. It is stated that the overall role of the IC has changed in dramatic fashion, which led to the establishment of DNI as a financial overseer (Richelson, 2015). These shifts of duties made the community uncontrollable, and thus, there was a need for a manager with no aligned interests with Central Intelligence, such as DCI. Therefore, the core financial obligation of DNI is to determine and develop the budget of the National Intelligence Program (“The Director of National Intelligence,” 2019). In other words, DNI holds IC accountable directly to the President of the United States.
Moreover, DNI’s key responsibility in financial matters is to be involved in the process of resource allocations. He or she must be able to monitor the overall execution of the budget as well as direct the resource flow to each segment of the agencies (“The Director of National Intelligence,” 2019). According to a scholar, there is a further need for bolstering the role of DNI in the general oversight of the IC due to the lack of sufficient control and information sharing (Cordero, 2015). It is supported by other experts, who claim that DNI can be described as powerless, especially due to the bureaucratic bloating factor (Stimson & Habeck, 2016). In other words, the given government official has a limited set of capabilities, which hinder his or her power execution regarding all duties, including financial oversight.
In conclusion, it is important to note that DNI’s establishment allows controlling IC activities regarding a number of matters, such as budget allocation. The most critical role of DNI is to create the overall budget plan and control its flow. In addition, he or she directs the budget allocation by ensuring that each level of agency acquires sufficient resources. However, in practice, DNI might have certain restrictions regarding exercising his or her power.
References
Cordero, C. (2015). A response to professor Samuel Rascoff’s presidential intelligence. HeinOnline. Web.
The Director of National Intelligence. (2019). Web.
Richelson, J. T. (2015). The U.S. intelligence community (7th ed.). Routledge.
Stimson, C., & Habeck, M. (2016). Reforming intelligence: A proposal for reorganizing the intelligence community and improving analysis. The Heritage Foundation. Web.