Effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security Since Its Creation - Research Paper Example

Running head: EFFECTIVENESS OF THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY Effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security Since Its Creation Yourschool Abstract This paper analyzes several assessments of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security. The sources in this literature review were written over the course of four years, from shortly after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to just before the present paper. It is the aim of the method of this paper that a chronological view of varied assessments of the Department will provide a solid view of its overall effectiveness during its lifetime. Outline 1) Schneier’s assessment of the inception of the DHS (2003) Plastic sheeting and duct tape Color-coded alerts Budget and proportion to risk 2) 9-11 Commission Report findings (2004) Terrorist travel information not being shared Examples of Commission suggestions for DHS 3) Perrow article “ The Disaster After 9/11“ (April 2006) Reasons DHS is failing based on lack of connections with intelligence community 4)Armed Forces Journal article (June 2006) 9-11 Commission findings DHS criticisms: Katrina, border security Carafano’s standard of resilience Schanzer: need for end goals 5) Office of Personnel Management survey of federal employees (July 2006) DHS was last or near to last in every category 6) Chemical and biological threats of air transportation (2006) Lack of chemical/biological responsibility of TSA within DHS Effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security Since Its Creation Introduction The purpose of this paper is to explore different assessments of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security from the time of its creation on November 25, 2002 to the present. The author of this paper has taken an interest in the subject of homeland security since the 9-11 attacks, and in particular, has an interest in post-9-11 responses to defending the U.S. from terrorism. The assessments of the Department of Homeland Security that are discussed in this paper evaluate the Department’s effectiveness with regard to a variety of aspects of homeland security, and it is the goal of this paper to provide a synthesis of these various aspects. The approach of the literature review that follows is that of presenting the concepts and main ideas of works in chronological order, based on their publication date. This approach is taken in order to reveal any progression that may have been made in the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security. This paper first reviews the perceived effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security from its inception, as described in Schneier’s book (2003). Then this paper reviews the 9-11 Commission Report, as it pertains to the Department of Homeland Security. This paper reviews an article about the relation of the Department of Homeland Security to the intelligence reorganization and an article of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security that appeared in the Armed Forces Journal. We consider the results of a government survey in which the Department of Homeland Security places last and near last in many categories. Finally, we analyze a report from a committee designed to analyze the biological and chemical defense readiness of the Transportation Security Administration, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Literature Review Schneier’s book “Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World” (2003) was written shortly after the inception of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Schneier evaluates what the effectiveness of the newly created (at the time of his book) Department of Homeland Security might be, based on its own mission statements. According to Schneier, “the Department of Homeland Security is far more likely to increase the country’s vulnerability to terrorism” (Schneier, 2003, p.251). Schneier believes that a centralizing coordination of security will create a uniform way of thinking and responding to terrorism threats, unless the responsibility of security is also distributed widely among other organizations. According to Schneier, the function of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is to enable communication between all of the different security organizations within the U.S. From the DHS, there should be coordination and analysis of threats; decisions and policy should be made from the DHS. But according to Schneier, “the U.S. would be less secure if the Department of Homeland Security took over all security responsibility from the other departments” (Schneier, 2003, p.252). Other departments might then ignore national security, by believing it was the responsibility of the DHS. One of the first advisories of the Department of Homeland Security was that citizens should stock their homes with plastic sheeting and duct tape. But as Schneier states, automobile accidents are much more common than terrorist attacks within the U.S. So just by traveling by automobile to purchase these items, Americans would be actually increasing their risk (Schneier, 2003, p.238). Ignoring the Department of Homeland Security’s advisory would make a person safer in this case. Another early implementation (on March 12, 2002) of the Office of Homeland Security, a precursor to the Department of Homeland Security, was the color-coded threat alerts known as the Homeland Security Advisory System. According to Schneier, they were useless from the beginning (Schneier, 2005, p.248). The reason the color-coded threat alerts are useless to people is because the level of threat is not tied to any specific actions that people can take, unlike the military’s DEFCON threat level system, which is tied to specific military actions to perform. Schneier asserts that the color-coded threat alerts are harmful because they cause worry and fear. By color levels changing frequently and seemingly without cause, the alerts are “anesthetizing people to future alerts and warnings” (Schneier, 2005, p.248) and creating a more dangerous situation. Another problem with the alerts is that they are publicized, so that a terrorist can wait until the color level goes down before striking. The color-coded threat alerts now issued by the Department of Homeland Security could become useful if they were eventually associated with specific actions people can undertake and if the color level changes were also associated with specific causes. Anther point that Schneier makes is that terrorist have won if a nation spends an infinite amount of its budget on homeland security (Schneier, 2003, p.241). This is because one of the goals of terrorism is to create terror that is disproportionate to the actual risk. The U.S. budget for security in 2003 was $33.7 billion (Schneier, 2003, p.9). According to Schneier we are paying a lot for security, and there are also costs of this security beyond monetary costs. The 9/11 Commission Report was released on July 22, 2004, and offers a good assessment of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security at the time. The Commission report states that the Department of Homeland Security terrorist travel information had not been shared with border security (2005, p.385). This is attributed to the difficulty in merging different agencies within the DHS. The Commission made several other suggestions for improvements in the Department of Homeland Security. For instance, it was suggested that border security be integrated into a larger screening system that included transportation and vital facilities access. Another suggestion was the creation of a biometric entry-exit screening system that could catch terrorists who only have to alter their name to gain entry. In addition, the Commission found that when it came to terrorism analysis, there was a duplication of effort between different government agencies (2005, p.401). Perhaps ironically, one of the witnesses that came before the Commission stated that the development of the Department of Homeland Security may be hampered by the 88 committees that the DHS leaders had to appear before (Commission, 2005, p.421). In his article, “The Disaster After 9/11: The Department of Homeland Security and the Intelligence Reorganization,” Perrow states his view that the creation of the DHS is an “attempt at centralization sure mostly to fail to make us feel safer” (2006, p.22). Perrow sees the failure of the DHS as a failure to connect with the intelligence agencies. Perrow also sees the improvements in national security since 9-11 as being in spite of the Department of Homeland Security (p.27). Perrow also lists many national vulnerabilities such as unprotected stockpiles and unguarded borders. Add to this a possible decrease in natural emergency protection due to the DHS approach to funding, and Perrow’s assessment of DHS effectiveness can be seen as bleak. In an article for the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, William Matthews describes many of the problems of the Department of Homeland Security. One of its near failing "report cards" was the 9-11 Commission. In that report, it was found that firefighters and police can not be assured of communications during an emergency; airlines are not screening against all terror watch lists; and that security grants for communities were misspent on unrelated purchases (Matthews, 2006). According to Matthews, this situation was described by the Commission as scandalous, although the author has not found the use of that word in the Commission report. According to Matthews, the Department of Homeland Security is blamed for many things. One of the largest criticisms of the Department is the poor response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Other points of criticism are failing to protect the nations borders and inadequate port security. Another criticism of the Department of Homeland Security is that it is a huge, slow, unwieldy bureaucracy. According to Matthews, as of June 2006 there were 180,000 employees of the department, working in 22 agencies. In addition to being charged with combating and preventing terrorism, the DHS has also been put in charge of immigration and naturalization, subsuming the INS. The DHS also handles transportation security; another of its goals is to respond to domestic emergencies such as Katrina. The Department of Homeland Security received its second scorecard a few months after the 9-11 Commission, when the Democrats gave their House Committee on Homeland Security report. Matthews describes how the Democrats concluded that the DHS is on the verge of failure in protecting the countrys infrastructure and providing emergency response. They found slight improvements in surface transportation security and border security. They also found the response to Katrina to have been bungled. Matthews quotes James Carafano from the Heritage Foundation, as stating that the most important standard is not whether we are safer, but whether our society is more resilient. Measuring the effectiveness of homeland security measures by whether or not a terrorist attack occurs will produce a failing metric, according to Carafano. But how a society continues after a terrorist attack is a better measure of success. Carafano even suggests that the response to Hurricane Katrina is evidence of resilience since the nation’s business and economy continued as usual. Carafano agrees with the 9-11 Commission that money allocated for homeland security has been misspent. According to Carafano, what is needed the most is “to build an emergency communications infrastructure, emergency operations centers, situational awareness capabilities and training for first responders” (Matthews, 2006). This is in contrast to focusing on certain vulnerabilities such as airline screening and port security. Matthews also quotes David Schanzer, the former Democratic staff director of the House Homeland Security Committee, as stating that what is needed from the Department of Homeland Security is a statement of end goals, steps on how to get there, and metrics for measuring the effectiveness of reaching these goals. This presumably would lead away from the tendency to measure the effectiveness of homeland security by how many inspections of cargo containers are made, and how much surveillance equipment is purchased and installed. The DHS has produced a document that discusses strategy for homeland security; this 2003 document is called “The Preparedness Guidelines for Homeland Security”, but it presumably does not cover the end goals, steps or metrics mentioned by Schanzer. A survey conducted in July 2006 by the Office of Personnel Management that measured job satisfaction of federal employees found that DHS was last or near to last in every category (Office of Personnel Management, 2006). The survey was also a measure of whether employees perceived that their organization had conditions which would characterize it as successful. The survey data is broken down by agency so that answers can be compared to other agencies. From the survey data, the DHS does appear to be below the average percentage for all government agencies in many categories, such as “the people I work with cooperate to get the job done.” This is a strong indication of ineffectiveness at DHS. It has been found by the Committee on Assessment of Security Technologies for Transportation that there are no measures in place to defend the U.S. air transportation system from chemical and biological attack (Committee, 2006, p.27). Research and simulations are funded by the Department of Homeland Security, such as studies of chemical and biological vectors; airflow in terminals; and DHS simulations of responses to chemical and biological attack. However, this research and simulation has been found to be “preliminary and of limited scope” (p.27). Because the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is part of the Department of Homeland Security, the responsibility for a lack of chemical and biological defense of air transportation falls on the DHS. But according to the Committee (2006, p.1) the DHS has not even assigned the TSA responsibility for biological and chemical defense of air transportation. The Committee on Assessment of Security Technologies for Transportation has also found that many alternative chemical and biological detection technologies are being developed by various agencies, but that there is no structure within the TSA or any other part of the Department of Homeland Security for evaluating these technologies. The committee made a recommendation that the TSA support “vendor-independent testing capability” (Committee, 2006, p.28), instead of trying to duplicate the technologies themselves. Other aspects of security that may be lacking within the TSA and the DHS can be inferred from other recommendations made by the Committee on Assessment of Security Technologies for Transportation. For instance, the Committee recommends the TSA form a high level task force that would create an air transportation threat assessment document; create an air defense strategy; utilize airflow studies and research chemical and biological dispersal; and coordinate with other agencies involved in chemical and biological threats (Committee, 2006, p.28). Most of these tasks have not been undertaken by the TSA or the DHS, at least not at a comprehensive, high level. Methodology In this section we present some data and information in the form of tables in order to support some of the statements made in the literature review section. In particular, we present an overview of the bureaucratic structure of the Department of Homeland Security. Some data illustrating the budget of the Department of Homeland Security is also presented, as well as what the allocated money has actually been spent on. Fig. 1- Organization of the Department of Homeland Security, showing the various agencies. From U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2007). Fig. 1 shows the number and types of agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, which lends support to the claim that the DHS has become a large bureaucracy. From the figure, there appear to be over two dozen separate agencies that must be coordinated. In addition, there is a wide variety of the type of agency included; everything from immigration to transportation security, and from health affairs to counternarcotics. Table 1 - Budget of the Department of Homeland Security(in millions of dollars). From the Office of Management and Budget, DHS (2007). 2006 Actual Estimate 2007 2008 Spending Gross Discretionary Budget Authority: Departmental Management and Operations 856 915 998 Office of the Inspector General 82 99 99 Citizenship and Immigration Services 114 182 30 Legislative proposal — — –4 United States Secret Service 1,219 1,277 1,399 Customs and Border Protection 5,865 6,442 8,791 Immigration and Customs Enforcement 3,633 4,444 4,781 Transportation Security Administration 5,891 6,010 6,399 United States Coast Guard 6,710 7,052 7,272 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 6,146 6,013 5,187 State and Local Programs (non-add) 3,378 3,393 2,196 Science and Technology 1,467 848 799 Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) 1 — 481 562 National Protection and Programs Directorate 947 941 1,164 Federal Law Enforcement Training Center 279 253 263 Other 4 — — Total, Gross 33,213 34,957 37,740 Less fee-funded activities –2,545 –2,976 –3,452 Total, Discretionary budget authority (net) 30,668 31,981 34,288 Memorandum: Budget authority from enacted supplementals –15,792 1,919 — Additional funding requirements — 3,520 2 225 2 Total, Discretionary outlays 52,695 46,956 42,904 Mandatory Outlays: FEMA 16,519 3,014 343 Citizenship and Immigration Services 1,584 1,776 2,386 United States Secret Service 201 200 210 United States Coast Guard 1,212 1,295 1,431 All Other –3,104 –2,811 –4,062 Total, Mandatory outlays 16,412 3,474 308 Total, Outlays 69,107 50,430 43,212 Credit activity Direct Loan Disbursements: Disaster Assistance 629 516 79 1 DNDO received $125 million in 2006 in the Science and Technology appropriation. 2 $120 million in 2007 and $225 million in 2008 is proposed to be transferred from the Department of Defense to the United States Coast Guard The budget of the Department of Homeland Security is displayed in Table 1. As can be seen from the estimates for 2007 and 2008, the budget is expected to increase by over a billion dollars a year. The table also shows how the allocated money is spent between the different agencies. In the next couple years, the budget for some agencies such as science and technology is actually expected to decrease. It appears that even the budget for FEMA, which was involved in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, is also expected to decrease even though the overall DHS budget is slated to increase. These aspects may come as a surprise to taxpayers who believe that more will be done for emergency preparation in the future. Discussion As Schneier admits in his book, the color-coded threat alerts issued by the Department of Homeland Security could become useful if they were eventually associated with specific actions people can undertake. In addition, people should know what exactly caused the alert system’s color to change. But theses are changes to the color-coded threat alerts that have not occurred, to the best of the author’s knowledge. Instead, the color-coded threat alerts have seemed to disappear from public announcements in the last few years. Time allowing, it would be interesting for further research to be done on the history of how the color level changed in the Homeland Security Advisory System. It would be interesting to see a graph of the frequency of how much it changed. An analysis of what caused it to change and how people responded could be included, as well as an analysis of how people might respond less to alert level changes as time goes on. One measure of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security must be if we are getting our money’s worth, and if we as a nation are responding and expending resources on combating the risk of terrorism at an appropriate level corresponding to what the amount of risk actually is. As of 2007, the DHS budget is 35.6 billion and growing by billions each year. Further research might try to determine if this budget is being spent on areas that taxpayers think are the most necessary. The effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security might be measured in how many terrorist attack attempts have been thwarted since the departments inception. However, even this may be hard to measure, in light of secrecy surrounding information held by the Department of Homeland Security. It is also seemingly impossible to measure the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security in thwarting terrorists before they even make attempts. Presumably this is one of the effects of the DHS; if a terrorist believes that the nation has enough security measures in place that her/his plans have a high likelihood of being discovered beforehand, that terrorist would likely choose an easier target nation. But the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security in stopping terrorist attacks cannot be measured by the lack of terrorist attacks in America since 9-11. There is no way of knowing how many terrorist attacks would have occurred in the same period if there had been no Department of Homeland Security; possibly there would still have been none. In light of the difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security, maybe the best recent measure was given by the 9-11 Commission. The fact that this commission gave a near failing assessment of the department is probably a good indication that the Department of Homeland Security, at least as of December 2005, is a very ineffective department. Other sources since that time period show that the Department of Homeland Security, if it is making improvements, is only moving slowly. Possibly one of the reasons for its ineffectiveness is the amount and variety of different objectives that the Department of Homeland Security has been assigned. For instance, being the responsible agency for both domestic natural disasters such as hurricanes, securing the borders against illegal immigration, and preventing terrorist attacks may be too many goals for any one agency to effectively handle. The author does not agree with Carafano’s assessment of the response to Hurricane Katrina being evidence of resilience. The effectiveness of homeland security must be measured in terms besides the nation’s business and economy; the effect of events on people and their quality of life must also be taken into account. The author also only partially agrees that the measure of homeland security’s effectiveness should be in the resilience evident in the face of a terrorist attack; at least part of homeland security’s effectiveness should be measured in potential attacks that are completely thwarted, in spite of the difficulty in measuring this. Further research might also include a study of the scandals surrounding the Department of Homeland Security, which presumably have an effect on its effectiveness. These scandals include a government credit card misuse scandal uncovered by the Government Accountability Office that resulted in $2 billion in fraud and waste; the scandal over budget cuts in explosive detection equipment after the British uncovered a terrorist plot on airliners using liquid explosives; and the revelation in 2003 that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer of the DHS, obtained her degrees from a diploma mill. Future research could also delve into even more committee findings. For instance, in August 2006, senators of the Appropriations Committee found the Science and Technology Directorate, which is another agency of the DHS, to be off track. This just adds more evidence to the type of ineffectiveness that has already been described here by other committees though. Finally, to give a more accurate estimate of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security, research into thwarted terrorist attempts could be done in the future. The Shoe Bomber incident is an example of such a thwarted attempt since 9-11, but this incident still occurred before the actual formation of the DHS. There does not seem to be any other thwarted terrorist attempt widely publicized in the media since the formation of the DHS, which the Department could potentially take credit for. References Committee on Assessment of Security Technologies for Transportation (2006). Defending the U.S. Air Transportation System Against Chemical and Biological Threats. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Matthews, W. (2006, June). Homeland Insecurity: Post-9/11 Fixes Havent Fixed a Thing. Armed Forces Journal. Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2007). Budget of the United States Government, FY 2008. Retrieved April 13, 2007 from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/homeland.html Office of Personnel Management (2006). Federal Human Capital Survey. Perrow, C. (2006, April). The Disaster After 9/11: The Department of Homeland Security and the Intelligence Reorganization. Homeland Security Affairs. Vol. II, no.1. Schneier, B. (2003). Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. New York: Copernicus Books. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004). The 9-11 Commission Report. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2007, March). Organizational Chart. Retrieved April 13, 2007 from http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/structure/editorial_0644.shtm Read More