Department of Homeland Security: Start-Up Challenges and Integration

Launch and Start-Up Obstacles

The Department of Homeland Security is clearly a start-up organization. The department formally began operating on January 24, 2003, and by March 1 had absorbed representatives from most of its component parts. The formal process of transferring agencies was expected to be completed by September 30, 2003, but analysts suggested that full integration would take at least several years.

As a practical matter, the new department was preoccupied with day-to-day start-up issues: finding a physical location, improving communications capabilities, and managing personnel. Finding a location for the agency was paramount. DHS headquarters was at a temporary location, with the majority of additional personnel scattered elsewhere. Practical staff questions about new office locations and supervisory assignments remained largely unanswered.

Questions also abounded about how the new organizational components would communicate with each other. Linking phone systems and databases — most of the 22 agencies had their own internal computer systems, communications infrastructure, and email platforms — remained a pressing challenge of the first magnitude.

Human resources issues were equally acute, including hiring, firing, retirement processing, payroll, and assignment to new tasks. Enormous pressure existed to fill positions. Yet as of early March 2003, most of the senior and critical jobs in DHS were still vacant. Only 3 of the department's top 23 managers had been confirmed by the Senate, and nominees for most of those positions had not yet been decided.

Integrating Agencies and Defining Functions

A central challenge facing DHS was how to effectively join border security functions and interior functions into an organization with centralized leadership and decentralized operations. The department also had to coordinate a network of disaster response capabilities while seeking to become a focal point for the analysis and dissemination of intelligence. At the same time, it was charged with unifying research and development efforts to detect and counter potential terror attacks, with the goal of shoring up vulnerabilities in the nation's critical infrastructure — including its ports, utilities, and food and water supply.

Compounding this difficulty was the challenge of integrating agencies such as the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) into a single organization, while simultaneously leaving others — notably the FBI and CIA — outside its structure. The relative autonomy of some transferred agencies, such as the Coast Guard and Secret Service, raised further questions about what new controls and guidance they would face. In a broader context, the new department was likened to an interior ministry, but without a national police component.

A second issue concerned the specific functions that differing DHS components would perform. Some agencies, such as the Coast Guard and Secret Service, would likely not change dramatically in how they were managed or operated. However, the orchestration of other agencies' functions in the new structure was far from settled. Among the emerging functions was the likely creation of a full-time, permanent red team to simulate terrorist threats and test the security of installations such as nuclear plants and government buildings. Another new function assigned to the department was oversight of visa processing — raising the question of how this would be coordinated with the State Department. The operational role of DHS across its many areas of responsibility also remained undefined.

A third and crucial issue was how intelligence would be moved through the system and shared. It was not clear to what degree the department would have its own intelligence analysis group. Absent a strong in-house intelligence analysis component, DHS might have to rely more heavily on pre-digested information from other agencies. As it started up, the department's intelligence role was limited primarily to linking analysis from the newly created interagency Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) to efforts to strengthen the defenses of critical infrastructure.

On January 28, 2003, President Bush announced the creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The new center was responsible for fusing and analyzing domestic and foreign intelligence related to terrorist threats. It was chaired by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and staffed by members of the intelligence community, the law enforcement community, and DHS. Reportedly, the center would have access to all intelligence information available to the U.S. government, both raw and processed.

The creation of the TTIC was considered controversial by some in Congress, who were concerned that it undermined the language and intent of the Homeland Security Act — specifically, that the TTIC's functions were meant to be performed within the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Directorate of DHS. Other analysts expressed concern that the TTIC structure would increasingly involve the DCI in domestic intelligence issues, a sensitive arena potentially prone to conflict with civil liberties safeguards.

Intelligence Sharing and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center

One function of the TTIC would reportedly be to maintain an up-to-date database of known and suspected terrorists, available to federal and non-federal officials as needed. This function was designed as a terrorism counterpart to EPIC, the El Paso Intelligence Center. In the drug enforcement context, a police officer on the beat can, in real time, contact EPIC and retrieve information about a suspect from a national drug-trafficking database.

Other complex questions remained unresolved: What role would DHS play in the flow of information from the national level to the first responder, and vice versa? What role would the new department have in facilitating the flow of information to the public, the private sector, international organizations, and foreign governments? Some argued that homeland security is in its essence global security — that security for one can never be achieved without security for all. How DHS would interact with the international community remained yet to be defined.

An important issue was what role DHS would play in promoting and integrating science and technology into the homeland security policy equation. The pragmatic answer was "more," especially in the areas of threat and vulnerability assessment.

In September 2002, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology issued a report on maximizing the contribution of science and technology to homeland security. The report stressed the need for flexibility in research and development programs in terms of organization, personnel, and budget. It also proposed a DHS organizational structure for research and development to be headed by an undersecretary for science and technology — an idea subsequently adopted. The report further recommended the use of risk management, based on risk assessment, in the budgeting process and in research and development programs, in order to determine infrastructure interaction models.

The new DHS Science and Technology Directorate was designed to coordinate research and development programs, including preparation for and response to threats from weapons of mass destruction. A major responsibility of the directorate was to unify research and development efforts to detect and counter potential terrorist attacks. DHS requests for research and development funding totaled $761 million for fiscal year 2003 and $1 billion for fiscal year 2004.

An important question was how Congress would relate to this new entity as it performed its traditional functions of oversight, legislation, and appropriation. Much of this depended on how Congress chose to organize itself — either by creating new structures or by restructuring existing committees. Both the new department and the threats it addressed defied traditional jurisdictional boundaries. At that time, 88 committees and subcommittees in Congress held oversight responsibilities for agencies that had been folded into DHS.