marinemom
03-02-04, 05:22 AM
Happy Birthday, DHS
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
Washington Post
THIS WEEK, the Department of Homeland Security celebrates its first anniversary as an institution. To mark the occasion, multiple reports on its progress are due. With its staff crowded into temporary office space or scattered across Washington, with a high percentage -- the numbers are disputed -- of its senior positions unfilled, with quarrels still erupting periodically about its employees' union rights and pay scales, critics are saying that the department is still a work in progress. It's also true that an enormous amount has been achieved in the past year, as DHS officials are telling everyone this week: a new airport security system, new border operations, new port security, new fences in Washington. Melding these two drastically different pictures is difficult. What is missing, still, is a better way for outsiders and insiders to measure the department's development.
It is always difficult to monitor the progress of a large government department -- and this one has 180,000 employees. But the DHS is a special case. For one thing, more than 80 congressional committees and subcommittees have jurisdiction over some part of the department, making for much repetitive testimony and muddled oversight. The very newness of the idea of "homeland security" is a larger problem. How much should be spent on first responders, as opposed to biodefense research? Which is more important: protecting chemical plants or protecting cyberspace?
Some of these points are raised by Democratic members of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, in a report they issued last week. They point out that there is still no "comprehensive threat and vulnerability assessment to set priorities and guide strategy." Nor has the department produced a list of "essential capabilities that all communities should have," based, realistically, on what threats they might face, as opposed to how much money members of Congress might want for their districts. Although DHS spokesmen say they have asked states to develop security plans, there is no standard by which to judge those plans: The department's inspector general has written that it needs to develop "meaningful performance measures" to help it make judgments about where to spend money.
Perhaps unintentionally, the Democrats' report also makes apparent what the result will be if clear targets are not set. In almost every area of DHS activity -- border security, port security, intelligence, infrastructure protection -- the authors, and the myriad experts they quote, find the department understaffed and underfunded, lacking everything from border guards to computer experts to a container inspectorate that, in the words of one expert, ought to be the size of "a diplomatic service." Maybe so -- but it would also be very expensive to fill all of those jobs, and it isn't clear how much security the country would really get in return for the extra money.
To its credit, the department has published its own list of "priorities" for year two. Some, such as better communications systems, are clearly critical. Missing, however, is a sense of which threats the department considers most urgent. Truck bombs? Hijackings? Nuclear weapons? Officials in the department, higher-ranking members of the administration and members of Congress should dedicate the department's second year to refining their definition of "threat," as well as their definition of "protection," so that future progress assessments become easier to make.
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
Washington Post
THIS WEEK, the Department of Homeland Security celebrates its first anniversary as an institution. To mark the occasion, multiple reports on its progress are due. With its staff crowded into temporary office space or scattered across Washington, with a high percentage -- the numbers are disputed -- of its senior positions unfilled, with quarrels still erupting periodically about its employees' union rights and pay scales, critics are saying that the department is still a work in progress. It's also true that an enormous amount has been achieved in the past year, as DHS officials are telling everyone this week: a new airport security system, new border operations, new port security, new fences in Washington. Melding these two drastically different pictures is difficult. What is missing, still, is a better way for outsiders and insiders to measure the department's development.
It is always difficult to monitor the progress of a large government department -- and this one has 180,000 employees. But the DHS is a special case. For one thing, more than 80 congressional committees and subcommittees have jurisdiction over some part of the department, making for much repetitive testimony and muddled oversight. The very newness of the idea of "homeland security" is a larger problem. How much should be spent on first responders, as opposed to biodefense research? Which is more important: protecting chemical plants or protecting cyberspace?
Some of these points are raised by Democratic members of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, in a report they issued last week. They point out that there is still no "comprehensive threat and vulnerability assessment to set priorities and guide strategy." Nor has the department produced a list of "essential capabilities that all communities should have," based, realistically, on what threats they might face, as opposed to how much money members of Congress might want for their districts. Although DHS spokesmen say they have asked states to develop security plans, there is no standard by which to judge those plans: The department's inspector general has written that it needs to develop "meaningful performance measures" to help it make judgments about where to spend money.
Perhaps unintentionally, the Democrats' report also makes apparent what the result will be if clear targets are not set. In almost every area of DHS activity -- border security, port security, intelligence, infrastructure protection -- the authors, and the myriad experts they quote, find the department understaffed and underfunded, lacking everything from border guards to computer experts to a container inspectorate that, in the words of one expert, ought to be the size of "a diplomatic service." Maybe so -- but it would also be very expensive to fill all of those jobs, and it isn't clear how much security the country would really get in return for the extra money.
To its credit, the department has published its own list of "priorities" for year two. Some, such as better communications systems, are clearly critical. Missing, however, is a sense of which threats the department considers most urgent. Truck bombs? Hijackings? Nuclear weapons? Officials in the department, higher-ranking members of the administration and members of Congress should dedicate the department's second year to refining their definition of "threat," as well as their definition of "protection," so that future progress assessments become easier to make.