WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has failed to carry out the September 11 Commission’s recommendations aimed at improving the American intelligence network, panel members said.

The nation’s 16 spy agencies are still slow to share information and there’s no evidence that it’s easier to move money and personnel among the agencies, members of the September 11 Commission said. The most visible accomplishment of the current director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has been to amass a staff of more than 1,300, they say.

“The Bush administration’s execution of the DNI reforms recommended by our commission has been a failure,” said a member of the panel that probed the September 11 attacks and a secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, John Lehman.

A former Democratic senator from Nebraska who served on the commission, Bob Kerrey, said the Bush administration lost the urgency it displayed after the 2001 terrorist attacks to coordinate efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. “The unity of purpose of the FBI and CIA six months after 9/11 has disappeared,” Mr. Kerrey said.

A Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today will give Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, 63, President Bush’s choice to replace Mr. Negroponte, a chance to say how he plans to turn the post into what the commission envisioned. Mr. McConnell is expected to receive confirmation by the full Senate. Mr. Negroponte is leaving to become deputy secretary of state.

While terrorists’ inability to mount an attack on American soil since 2001 shows important progress, there have been setbacks, former intelligence officials and analysts said.

America underestimated the seriousness of sectarian violence in Iraq and even administration officials such as Secretary of State Rice questioned last year whether America underestimated the strength of the Hamas militant group in the Palestinian Authority. Lawmakers such as Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and Intelligence Committee member, say America doesn’t know enough about Iran’s efforts to become a nuclear power.

Mr. McConnell, if confirmed, would take over an organization with a combined $44 billion annual budget that includes the nation’s spy agencies, the units that analyze their findings, and a 400-person group that oversees counterterrorism activities. Critics such as Mr. Lehman say the new bureaucracy hasn’t met the September 11 Commission’s goals.

“It was the exact opposite of what we recommended, which was to create a powerful change agent with a very small powerful staff to cut bureaucratic layers,” Mr. Lehman said.

Mr. Negroponte, 67, the former American ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq, should have done more to pressure the agencies to work together, a former Represetative from Connecticut who chaired a House intelligence oversight subcommittee, Rob Simmons, said.

“He’s been a diplomat through most of his career,” Mr. Simmons said. “But the DNI is not supposed to be a diplomat.”

It’s a point echoed by the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller.

“Negroponte was in some ways compromised,” Mr. Rockefeller said in an interview on Bloomberg TV’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” January 26. “I think Negroponte was a diplomat who ended up in a position where he acted maybe a bit too much as a diplomat, that he wasn’t really willing to face down the president.”

Mr. Negroponte, at his confirmation hearing for the deputy secretary of state post before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee January 30, said he worked to “integrate the intelligence community ” and achieved “a much greater degree of collegiality and integration than existed previously.”

DNI officials disputed that Mr. Negroponte hadn’t been forceful enough or lacked the power to do his job. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe referred questions to DNI.

“Simply cracking heads either wasn’t in his style and for the most part wasn’t necessary,” Mr. Negroponte’s chief of staff, David Shedd, said.