Today, the Department of Homeland Security is the third-largest agency in the federal government, behind only the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense.
When created in 2002, DHS merged 22 pre-existing federal agencies into one, marking the largest reorganization of the federal government in more than 50 years. Among the agencies included under the Homeland Security umbrella are the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In the first year of its existence, the Department of Homeland Security employed 180,000 full-time workers. Today, 240,000 people collect paychecks from the agency, according to its website.
The department’s budget has more than doubled since the agency’s inception in 2003, when it spent $29 billion. This year, DHS is slated to spend $61 billion. The department’s spending request for 2015 is about $60 billion, a $1 billion reduction from current-year spending – and a nod to the constricted federal budget climate.
Janet Napolitano, an Albuquerque native who served as the nation’s third secretary of homeland security during the first 4½ years of President Barack Obama’s time in office, is now president of the University of California. Through a university spokesman, Napolitano declined to be interviewed for this series.
Murky missions
A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service last year found that more than a decade after the Department of Homeland Security’s creation – and despite the specific language in the law that created it – the sprawling agency still didn’t have a clear definition for “homeland security,” or a strategy for integrating the divergent missions that are supposed to achieve it. The report suggested the uncertainty could actually be compromising national security.
“The U.S. government does not have a single definition for ‘homeland security,’ ” the report said. “Multiple definitions, missions and an absence of prioritization results in consequences to the nation’s security.”
“There is no clarity in the national strategies of federal, state, and local roles and responsibilities; and, potentially, funding is driving priorities rather than priorities driving the funding.”
— Congressional Research Service Report
The Congressional Research Service report also pointed out that there had been no attempt “to align definitions and missions among disparate federal entities.”
“There is no clarity in the national strategies of federal, state, and local roles and responsibilities; and, potentially, funding is driving priorities rather than priorities driving the funding,” the report said.
The ambiguity of purpose and growing budget and workforce at DHS prompted Ridge to question the overall direction of the agency he helped establish.
“Someone needs to explain to me how critical all these new people are to the nation,” Ridge said. “Are they (DHS) getting so big they’re actually making work?”
Mark Randol, who served as a Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism expert from 2004 until 2008 and now teaches classes in homeland security at Eastern Kentucky University, said it’s too soon to tell whether the Department of Homeland Security’s organization and missions are a success or failure.
“The idea was that hopefully there would be some synergy there, some opportunities for greater collaboration and so forth,” Randol said, referring to the initial decision to combine so many agencies with seemingly disparate missions. “Whether that has worked out or not kind of remains to be seen.”
“We created this department (DHS), we made this investment and there were reasons this was a good idea,” Randol added. “They may not be perfect, but the department, I think, has started to get some traction and some expertise. Those things don’t come overnight.”
“Perfect safety is an illusion; we could spend 10 times what we spend on Homeland Security and still not approach it.”
— Benjamin Friedman, research fellow in defense and homeland security at the Cato Institute
“The defense budget is far bigger, and during the time that DHS was growing, it was growing at a similar clip,” Friedman said.
But Friedman also said Homeland Security’s lack of a clear integrated mission makes its budget justifications “hard to understand” and raises legitimate questions about the bang taxpayers are getting for their buck.
“Perfect safety is an illusion; we could spend 10 times what we spend on Homeland Security and still not approach it,” Friedman said, adding that the department desperately needs to produce a more realistic cost-benefit analysis.
“We’re spending big bucks chasing some pretty small dangers,” he said.
Lack of leadership
Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard Extension School, has called the Department of Homeland Security “a colossal and inefficient boondoggle.”
“DHS was put together as one great big organized department, and in fact they’ve became one big disorganized group of stovepipes.”
— Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard Extension School
In a Journal interview, she said cultural problems at DHS are festering because of duplications of missions among agencies within the department, as well as a lack of top-level leadership.
“DHS was put together as one great big organized department, and in fact they’ve became one big disorganized group of stovepipes,” she said.
Thirteen of 48 of the department’s top leadership positions are either vacant or staffed with acting directors, according to the department’s website.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Jeh Johnson a former Pentagon lawyer, as the nation’s fourth secretary of homeland security in December. In response to questions from the Senate Homeland Security Committee before his confirmation hearing, Johnson cited the vacancies as among the department’s biggest problems.
“There is a leadership vacuum within DHS of alarming proportions,” Johnson wrote.
Low morale
As leadership positions go unfilled in the Department of Homeland Security, its employees ranked dead-last in morale among the 19 largest federal agencies for the past two years, according to the “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” survey compiled each year from Office of Personnel Management data.
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