Joint Interagency Task Force-South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success (INSS Strategic Perspectives, Number 5, June 2011)

Joint Interagency Task Force-South JIATF-South is well known within the U.S. Government as the gold standard for interagency cooperation and intelligence fusion, despite its preference for keeping a low profile and giving other agencies the credit for its successes. It is often cited as a model for whole-of-government problem-solving in the literature on interagency collaboration, and other national security organizations have tried to copy its approach and successes. Despite the plaudits and attention, the way that JIATF-South actually operates has only received superficial analysis. In fact, few people actually understand why JIATF-South works as well as it does or how its success might be replicated. This study attempts to fill the gap in knowledge about JIATF-South as a model for cross-organizational collaboration. It traces the evolution of the task force from its roots in the War on Drugs in the 1980s, through its original manifestation as Joint Task Force-4 in the early 1990s and its later reinvention as Joint Interagency Task Force-East, to its present day name of JIATF-South. The study then examines how JIATF-South actually works with the help of 10 organizational performance variables taken from organizational and management research on cross-functional teams. Investigating JIATF-Souths performance through these different organizational lenses, and weighing the importance of each variable in light of the Task Forces historical experience, yields a compelling explanation for JIATF-Souths stellar performance. The results contribute to a better understanding of interagency teams and help to answer the pressing question of whether successes like JIATF-South can be replicated elsewhere in the national security system.