Position Description – COLOMBIA (Strategic Defense Intelligence)
Title: Strategic Defense Intelligence Advisor COCOM: SOUTHCOM
Grade: GS-14/15 Tour length: 12 to 24 months
Location: Bogota, Colombia Clearance: TS/SCI
*Eligibility: Applicants must be DoD Civilians in GS-14/15 pay grades or equivalent*
The Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA) program trains advisors to work with Partner Nation Executives to identify high priority, long term goals and to achieve locally developed, sustainable solutions. The program matches senior Department of Defense (DoD) civilians with partner ministry counterparts in similar functional areas. Prior to deployment, selectees must successfully complete the comprehensive Senior Advisor Course and Country Mission studies that include; capacity building, operational readiness, history, culture, and language training.
Background:
Colombia has a robust tactical and operational intelligence capability that has hampered the ability of illicit groups to operate in governed areas within Colombia, and forced the FARC into negotiating a Peace Agreement. However, Colombia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) suffers from the lack of capacity to develop and provide strategic defense intelligence for its political decision makers, and to provide intelligence related policy and oversight of the military services. The Ministry of Defense, including the General Command and each of the military services lacks an overall standardization of intelligence tradecraft, doctrine and training; lacks a professional civilian intelligence cadre; lacks a shared, secure communications system and database infrastructure among all intelligence services; and lacks an interagency planning mechanism for future intelligence capabilities and operations. The MoD recognizes this deficiency and desires to develop its strategic defense intelligence institutional capabilities. The Ministry of Defense Advisor for Intelligence (MoDA-I) will focus on developing Colombia’s strategic defense intelligence institutional capabilities in the MoD and support a wide array of U.S. and Colombian strategic intelligence objectives and capacity-building efforts.
Specific Tasks:
• Serve as a single point of contact to shape and synchronize the various DoD program Intel activities in order to assist the Colombians in a timely and effective manner.
• Complement and support new defense intelligence institutional capacity-building and security cooperation efforts by OSC, SOUTHCOM, MoDA, DGMT, and other U.S. programs.
• Be an integral part of institutional-level strategic defense intelligence development efforts, and ensure coordination working closely with the incumbent MoDA, Perry Center, DIA, NGA, ODNI, ONI, NGIC, DISA, and CYBERCOM.
• Contribute to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense capacity building efforts related to intelligence, specifically with regard to developing Colombia’s interoperability with NATO as a NATO Global Partner under the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program (IPCP).
• Assist other U.S. Defense Intelligence Enterprise (DIE) cooperation programs and activities related to improving the strategic defense intelligence relationship, to include
engagements conducted by U.S. Southern Command, service components, and elements of the DIE.
• Develop a Ministerial Intelligence structure that provides defense intelligence policy and oversight.
• Develop a civilian professional intelligence cadre, and a Colombian national intelligence priorities framework.
• Create and refine joint doctrine and training for intelligence and intelligence support to operations.
• Improve intelligence interoperability across all services, the General Command, and the MoD.
• Develop and standardize analytic tradecraft across all defense intelligence services.
• Create and expand a secure communication architecture with interoperable, secure data basing of information.
• Improve interoperability and standardization of collection requirements and tasking across all services.
• Develop and improve systems for the delivery of strategic defense intelligence products to decision makers.
Required Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:
• Must have an excellent command of the Spanish language to provide clear and concise oral and written communication, and effective understanding of face-to-face speech.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in the applicable functional area as a government civilian.
• Experience in developing and implementing organizational change and management solutions in large and complex organizations.
• Knowledge of organizational change methods, tools, and frameworks.
• Prior experience at the Department, Service, or Combatant Command level.
• Fundamental knowledge of Institutional Capacity Building core processes (strategy and policy, force management, human resources management, acquisition and logistics, resource management, and defense governance) and the focus areas supporting security cooperation.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively engage with senior civilian policymakers and military general/flag officers, both U.S. and foreign, and operate in complex interagency environments.
• Proven self-starter who can work independently at various organizational levels and work successfully as a collaborative team member with executives, managers, leaders and staff from multiple functional areas.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a challenging and complex environment with limited resources and to apply innovative and creative solutions to resolve problems.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and prior experience in mentoring and training, and living in an international setting.
• Strong coordination and synchronization skills necessary to work with a wide range of USG security cooperation entities and individuals, and related allied and multinational organizations.
• Proven success in individual and organizational capacity building, and desire to share knowledge, mentor and coach others.
Additional Information:
• Incumbent must be available for detail from their home organization for a period of at least 14 months to include training, preparation and a 12 to 24 month assignment.
• The selected MoDA will do a Temporary Change of Station (TCS) move to Bogota, Colombia and will receive post differential and Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) while assigned to post. COLA is calculated based on the comparative cost-of-living at the foreign post versus the cost-of-living in Washington DC. COLA is not a direct calculation of base salary multiplied by the COLA percentage, but rather a percentage of spendable income as determined by the Department of State. For more information about COLA, go to: https://aoprals.state.gov/content.asp?content_id=245&menu_id=74
• This position is eligible to receive Relocation Incentive Pay in accordance with 5 U.S.C. § 5753 and DSCA policy.
• It is incumbent upon the applicant to understand the entitlements when considering applying for this position, and it is recommended that applicants seek guidance from their organization's payroll activity to better understand how the entitlements are calculated and their impact on the applicant's personal income.
HOW TO APPLY
Interested applicants should submit the following:
1. Cover Letter: Summarize how your skills and capabilities align with the requirements
2. Complete, narrative chronological resume
3. Current SF-50: redact SSN and date of birth
4. Supervisor reference(s): required from current supervisor and supervisor(s) from prior deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan
5. Documentation of command/ component approval to deploy
Submit complete application package to the MoDA Program Office email address: dsca.ncr.bpc.list.moda@mail.mil
Command Approval is required:
Department of the Army Employees: Must submit the endorsement of their command leadership along with an application and their resume to the Assistant G-1 for Civilian Personnel ECW team. Click on the following link and create an account to begin: www.apan.org. After creating the account, download the Request for Deployment (RFD) fillable form and process through chain of command as instructed.
Air Force Employees: Must submit approved AF Expeditionary Civilian application to the AF Expeditionary Civilian team prior to MoDA consideration. The employee is required to obtain WG/CC or equivalent approval, when approved submit application and resume to the AFPC Expeditionary Civilian team at afpc.expeditionarycivilian@us.af.mil for final AF action.
The AFPC team will submit to MoDA for consideration. The application and other information are available at the AF Expeditionary Civilian site: https://cs2.eis.af.mil/sites/12852/AFKN_Docs/Forms/AllItems.aspx
Navy and US Marine Corps Employees: Click on the following link to the MoDA Application and Command Support Form for DON Employees: https://portal.secnav.navy.mil/orgs/MRA/DONHR/OCHRStennis/Expeditionary%20Civilian%20Workforce/Forms/AllItems.aspx
Submit completed MoDA Application and Command Support Form for DON Employees to the group email inbox: OCHRSTE_EC@navy.mil. Ensure “MoDA” appears in the subject line.
Other DoD Agency Employees: Provide approval memo staffed through your appropriate Deployment Coordinator or agency headquarters.
*If you do not know your agency’s deployment coordinator, contact the MoDA recruiting team: dsca.ncr.bpc.list.modaprograminfo@mail.mil