Center for National Security Research (CNSR)

Capabilities

• Organizational  development and transformation—CNSR brings advanced degrees and significant experience to organizational development issues.In today’s challenging environment, organizations must do more with less and focus on essential mission components and the activities that allow them to be successful. ICF’s CNSR staff facilitates transformations and organizational interventions to meet these mission requirements.
• Program management support—CNSR successfully manages large complex engagements for the U.S. Department of Defense and national security clients. We have tackled complex mission relevant problems and provided effective solutions for the U.S. government on a wide variety of Human Capital engagements. 
• Organizational evaluation services—CNSR operates one of the largest training evaluation programs in the national security arena. Using the Kirkpatrick training evaluation model, CNSR staff sends out approximately 100,000 surveys per year evaluating thousands of courses and hundreds of curricula. This data provide actionable intelligence to educational decision-makers on the effectiveness of educational programs. We also provide program-level evaluation relative to resource, cost, and performance criteria.
• Information technology solutions—CNSR supports a variety of learning technology platforms for government clients. Our activities include optimizing the platform for the operational needs of the customer and providing requirements analysis for emerging systems and solutions.
• Strategic workforce planning—CNSR has deep and broad expertise in the workforce planning arena and is currently engaged in multiple projects across a variety of customer requirements. We bring a solid foundation of thorough analytical review and derive a metric-based approach for workforce planning initiatives.

Clients

• National security organizations
• U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
• The White House
  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Experts

• Brian O'Connell

  Vice President

• Dr. Michelle Dela Rosa

  Manager

Projects

• Learning Evaluation Project: CNSR is engaged in the most sophisticated and cutting-edge learning evaluation program in the national security arena. This effort focuses on providing senior executives with unparalleled insight into the performance of all training programs that are offered within the agency. The data that is collected is combined into detailed and actionable reports for decision-makers that allow the optimization of financial resources and also the performance of all involved with the creation, development, and delivery of instructional content.
  
  
• Expert Consulting Project: CNSR has been engaged to provide expert human capital consulting to a national security agency. The primary objectives of this effort are to provide access to nationally recognized expert consultants and assistance to national security agency staff in formulating optimal questions for the contracted experts.
  
  
• Development of a Congressionally Mandated Course: CNSR is engaged in completing the development of an agency-wide training program derived from a Congressional mandate for all agency employees supporting a classified mission. The course is a high-stakes application that has the highest standards of rigor in the design and application. Successful graduates of the course will be certified in performance of that activity.
  
  
• Curriculum Development Efforts: CNSR staff develops and delivers numerous blended learning curriculum solutions that fulfill core mission requirements. These engagements begin with an assessment of the learning requirements and identification of the learning objectives, which lead to the development of the optimum blended learning solution. The curriculum is delivered with the associated documentation and learning assessment activities. 
  
  
• Applications Development: CNSR staff is developing a blended e-learning solution for a Structured Query Language (SQL) software course. CNSR staff developed and fielded a training program for agency personnel using SQL.
  
  
• Survey Design and Administration: CNSR staff has deep experience and expertise in survey design, development, and analysis of survey results. Specifically, staff are engaged in the development, design, and administration of climate and attitude surveys. Projects include assessing agency-wide attitudes about health characteristics of the individuals' work environment.
  
  
• Personnel Testing: Experts within CNSR provide technical guidance to a national security organization on the development and use of Level II tests for high-stake exams and certification efforts.
  
  
• Training Needs Analyses: CNSR has been engaged to provide expert human capital consulting to assess the training needs of specific work roles within an agency. These projects require the validation of the tasks, skills, and knowledge of the work role. This analysis is followed by an assessment of the utility of existing training to provide instruction. Finally, a gap analyses report is produced to highlight where training deficiencies may exist and recommendations for strategies to close those gaps.