Intelligence community and director of national intelligence

Homeland Security Intelligence

With the advent of new technologies, human lifestyle is improving and people have found better ways to achieve their goals. The impact of technology is found at national level and many security threats are emerged. Keeping in view the possibility of increased security challenges in the time to come, there is serious need to revise the security policies and bring them all together under information communication strategy so that reporting chain and effective control can be determined.

Policy Memorandum of Homeland Security Intelligence

Homeland Security is the matter of national integrity and must be catered for as the utmost priority of government officials and policy makers. The implementing authorities should align their practices with the objective of protecting national integrity and give the feedback to policy makers if there is any issue of concern.

It can be argued that the establishment of a country consists of high officials who are experts, understand the essence of national integrity and evaluate pros and cons of their proposed policy. Providing them feedback or recommending any change in the policy may be considered a matter of slight for the responsible officials. However, it must be noted that there are certain institutes established by government officials whose duty is to keep an eye of enforced strategies of government and evaluate their effectiveness. Viewed from the perspective of ultimate goal i.e. ensuring homeland security, the role of these institutes becomes critical. If any flaw is found in the national integrity systems, these institutes are considered more responsible than the actual policy makers. It is because; the policy makers did their job by providing a framework which they considered suitable for national integrity. Once implemented, it becomes the job of these specialised institutes to evaluate its effectiveness so that monitory system can be launched by policy makers.

With this background in mind, this paper is written as a policy memorandum to be issued by Director of National Intelligence. The paper highlights the need to improve homeland security system based on evaluation of provision of existing system and provide recommendations for better results in the future. The paper is unique as it contains certain points which have been considered negligible for homeland security policy but may pose serious threats.

The first and most important point of consideration with the perspective of improving homeland security is related to established role of various institutes formed by government and their boundaries. The study and determination of boundaries is an important task as it helps policy makers and implementation authorities assign responsibilities to them. The responsibilities may be distributed under various heads of immigration, peace in country, anti-narcotics, intelligence etc. Based on the responsibilities assigned to them, these bodies perform their functions and remain on outdoor activities so that any violation can be controlled promptly.

Logically speaking, it is not possible that officials of particular agency or authority come across the news or information related to their functions only (Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland 2006). To be clearer, it is quite possible that peace team while moving on the road, come across suspected activities of trading in drugs. Legally speaking, the body is not responsible to stop it as it does not fall in its domain. On the other hand, keeping in view the ultimate goal, i.e. ensuring homeland security, the officials should not focus on their functional responsibility. They should understand the essence of their job and if find themselves beyond the authorities to control an activity, they should immediately communicate with the responsible body.

It is important to mention at this stage that communication between these sensitive authorities is not only on the basis of volunteer action. It must be included in the policy and specific guidelines for communication protocol must be set (Information Sharing Governance Board 2008). There can be various ways to regulate this communication need. Described below are some recommendations and aspects which must be taken into consideration before finalising the framework of communication among various government security organisations.

There can be reward provision for officials who do not belong to a particular force but report the activity which was crucial to national intelligence. Reward provisions, when included in the policy framework may encourage officials to stay more alert than their usual level and do something good for homeland.

It is assumed that all officials belonging to various institutes will be performing their duty and may come across the disturbing news with certain delay if it is not communicated by the officials of other authority. There can be coercive measures to force the officials report the issue which does not belong to their domain. The coercive measures can be based on certain parameters, like presence of officials in the area or witness to suspected activity. However, it is more likely that this initiative will discourage officials from focusing on their own functions and they will be more inclined towards staying alert for any activity that may not belong to their domain. An example in this regard is; airport security force members who are present at airport while immigration officers catch the passengers tempering with security laws.

Keeping in view both types of enforcement behaviour, it is interesting to mention that the policy makers who approve these provisions must equip the forces with certain communication tools which help them communicate effectively. The officials must know the contact details of each other and these contact details must be direct so that prompt information communication can be ensured (Zegart 2005). The communication devices must be high-tech, though easy to operate and fault tolerant.

The need of communication between local, state level and federal institutes emerges from the mentioned provisions. It is because, there may be certain activities in which various authorities are involved and the level of threat is so high that it calls for the attention of higher authorities as well. It is, therefore, important to bridge communication gap between these three levels, if there is any and equip all levels with the most efficient communication infrastructure.

The hierarchy of homeland security officials does not stop there. There is another force of military which enjoys more powers that any other force present in the country. Certain cases may be referred to military based on their sensitivity, criticality and need to involve the high experts who have the decision making as well as implementing authorities.