Information about United States Department Of Homeland Security

United States Department of Homeland Security
Motto: "Preserving our Freedom" Motto: "Preserving our Freedom"
Agency overview
Formed	November 25, 2002
Headquarters	Nebraska Avenue Complex
Employees	208,000 (2007)
Annual Budget	$44.6 billion (2007)
Agency Executives	Secretary, Michael Chertoff   Michael P. Jackson, Deputy Secretary

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), commonly known in the United States as Homeland Security, is a Cabinet department of the Federal Government of the United States with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the United States from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters.

Whereas the Department of Defense is charged with military actions abroad, the Department of Homeland Security works in the civilian sphere to protect the United States within, at, and outside its borders. Its goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism. On March 1, 2003, the DHS absorbed the now defunct United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and assumed its duties.

With over 200,000 employees, DHS is the third largest cabinet department in the U.S. federal government after the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs. Homeland security policy is coordinated at the White House by the Homeland Security Council, with Frances Townsend as the Homeland Security Advisor. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Energy.

Initial efforts after 9/11

In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush announced the establishment of an Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to coordinate "homeland security" efforts, to be headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge with the title of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. The name is reminiscent of the British WW2-era Ministry of Home Security. The official announcement stated:

The mission of the Office will be to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. The Office will coordinate the executive branch's efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States. ^[1]

Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge took up his duties as OHS director on October 8, 2001.

On March 12, 2002, the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS), a color-coded terrorism risk advisory scale, was created as a Presidential Directive to provide a "comprehensive and effective means to disseminate information regarding the risk of terrorist acts to Federal, State, and local authorities and to the American people."  Many procedures at government facilities are keyed off of the alert level; for example a facility may search all entering vehicles when the alert is above a certain level. Since January 2003, it has been administered in coordination with the DHS; it has also been the target of frequent jokes and ridicule on the part of the administration's detractors about its ineffectiveness. After resigning, Tom Ridge stated that he didn't always agree with the threat level adjustments pushed by other government agencies.

In January 2003, the office was merged into the Department of Homeland Security and the White House Homeland Security Council, both of which were created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Homeland Security Council, similar in nature to the National Security Council, retains a policy coordination and advisory role and is led by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security.

Creation of DHS

The department was established on November 25, 2002, by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. After months of discussion about employee rights and benefits and "rider" portions of the bill, it was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush. It was intended to consolidate U.S. executive branch organizations related to "homeland security" into a single Cabinet agency. Tom Ridge was named secretary on January 24, 2003 and began naming his chief deputies. DHS officially began operations on January 24, 2003, but most of the department's component agencies were not transferred into the new Department until March 1.

It was the largest government reorganization in 50 years (since the United States Department of Defense was created).

After establishing the basic structure of DHS and working to integrate its components and get the department functioning, Ridge announced his resignation on November 30, 2004, following the re-election of President Bush. Bush initially nominated former New York City Police Department commissioner Bernard Kerik as his successor, but on December 10, Kerik withdrew his nomination citing personal reasons and saying it "would not be in the best interests" of the country for him to pursue the post. On January 11, 2005, President Bush nominated federal judge Michael Chertoff to succeed Ridge. Chertoff was confirmed on February 15, 2005, by a vote of 98–0 in the U.S. Senate. He was sworn in the same day.

Controversy about adoption centered on whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency should be incorporated in part or in whole (neither were included). The bill itself was also controversial for the presence of unrelated riders, as well as eliminating certain union-friendly civil service and labor protections for department employees. President Bush wanted to ensure senior Homeland Security leadership had the expedited ability to reassign or dismiss an employee for security reasons, incompetence, or insubordination. Then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle wanted an appeals process that could take up to 18 months or as little as one month. The impasse became an issue during the 2002 congressional elections, which resulted in the Republican Party regaining a majority in the U.S. Senate. Soon thereafter, the U.S. Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002 without the union-friendly measures, and President Bush signed the bill into law on November 25, 2002. In 2006, a federal court injunction blocked many aspects of the new personnel system -- named MaxHR -- as they relate to employee pay and discipline. As a result of the court ruling, DHS announced in early 2007 that it was retooling its pay and performance system and retiring the name MaxHR.

Organization

This is not an image, but rather a PDF file.

• Under Secretary for Management
• Under Secretary for Science & Technology
• Under Secretary for National Protection & Programs
• Assistant Secretary for Policy
• Assistant Secretary, Office of Intelligence & Analysis/Chief Intelligence Officer
• Assistant Secretary, Office of Health Affairs & Chief Medical Officer
• Chief Privacy Officer/Chief FOIA Officer
• Director, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office
• Director, Office of Operations Coordination
• Director, Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement

Major Agencies

• Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Assistant Secretary for the Transportation Security Administration
• Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency
• Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection
• Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
• Director of the United States Secret Service
• Director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
• Commandant of the United States Coast Guard (In times of declared war, the Coast Guard may be put under the control of the Pentagon as a branch of the Navy)

As part of the reorganization within the department, on March 1, 2004 the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was created. The idea behind was to provide a consistent nationwide approach for Federal, State. local and tribal governments. Under Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-5 all Federal departments were required to adopt the NIMS and to use it in their individual domestic incident management and emergency prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation program and activities. A few months later in December 2004 the National Response Plan (NRP) was created, in an attempt to align Federal coordination structures, capabilities, and resources into a unified, all-discipline, and all-hazards approach to domestic incident management. The NRP was built on the template of the NIMS.

Headquarters

Since its inception, the Department has had its temporary headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Nebraska Avenue Complex, a former naval facility.^[2] In early 2007, the Department submitted a $4.1 billion plan to Congress to consolidate its 60-plus Washington-area offices into a single headquarters complex at the St. Elizabeth's Hospital campus in Southeast Washington. St. Elizabeths' claim to fame is being the insane asylum that houses John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Reagan in 1981. The earliest DHS would begin moving to St. Elizabeths is 2012.^[3].

The move is being championed by District of Columbia officials because of the positive economic impact it will have on historically depressed Southeast Washington, which is also the venue for the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, scheduled to open in 2008. Conversely, the move has been criticized by historic preservationists, who claim the revitalization plans will destroy dozens of historic buildings on the campus.^[4] Community activists also criticize the plans since the facility will remain walled off and have little interaction with the surrounding area.^[5]

Grants

DHS provides grants through a variety of programs to states, localities, first responders, and universities.

CREATE - Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events - the first university center of excellence funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is an interdisciplinary national research center based at the University of Southern California. The Center comprises a team of experts from across the country, including partnerships with New York University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ready.gov

Soon after the formation of Department of Homeland Security, the Martin Agency of Richmond, Virginia provided pro bono work to create "Ready.gov", a readiness website. The site and materials were conceived as early as March 2002 but were launched in February of 2003, just before the launch of the Iraq War ^{[6] [7] [8]}. One of the first announcements that garnered widespread public attention to this campaign was one by Tom Ridge in which he stated that in the case of a chemical attack, citizens should use duct tape and plastic sheeting to build a homemade bunker, or "sheltering in place" ^{[9] [10]} to protect themselves. As a result, the sales of duct tape skyrocketed and DHS received criticism that they were being too alarmist. ^[11][12] The site was promoted with banner ads containing automatic audio components on commercial web sites.

Criticism

See also:

The Department of Homeland Security has been dogged by persistent criticism over excessive bureaucracy, waste, and ineffectiveness. In 2003, the department came under fire after the media revealed that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS with responsibilities for sensitive national security databases, had in fact obtained her advanced computer science degrees through a diploma mill in a small town in Wyoming. The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the Government Accountability Office revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price many of which later could not be found, and iPods ostensibly for use in "data storage". ^{[13][14][15][16]}

The department's initial response to Hurricane Katrina was castigated by its critics as inadequate, a charge later acknowledged by the Bush administration. Following the discovery by British authorities in August 2006 of a plot to destroy commercial airliners using liquid explosives, it was revealed that DHS had consistently failed to spend research and development money on new airport screening methods, and that funds for explosive detection equipment were re-routed by the Bush Administration to cover budget shortfalls elsewhere. In August 2006, a bipartisan group of Senators on the Appropriations Committee described the Sciences & Technology Directorate, the research arm of DHS, as a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course".^[17]

The Associated Press reported on September 5, 2007 that the Department of Homeland Security has scrapped an anti-terrorism data mining tool called ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement) after the agency's internal Inspector General found that pilot testing of the system had been performed using data on real people without required privacy safeguards in place.^[18][19] The system, in development at Lawrence Livermore and Pacific Northwest national laboratories since 2003, has cost the agency $42 million to date. Controversy over the program is not new; in March 2007, the Government Accountability Office stated that "the ADVISE tool could misidentify or erroneously associate an individual with undesirable activity such as fraud, crime or terrorism". Homeland Security's Inspector General later said that ADVISE was poorly planned, time-consuming for analysts to use, and lacked adequate justifications.^[20]

Employee morale

In July 2006, the Office of Personnel Management conducted a survey of federal employees in all 36 federal agencies on job satisfaction and how they felt their respective agency was headed. DHS was last or near to last in every category including;

• 36th on the job satisfaction index
• 35th on the leadership and knowledge management index
• 36th on the results-oriented performance culture index
• 33rd on the talent management index

The low scores were attributed to major concerns about basic supervision, management and leadership within the agency. Examples from the survey reveal most concerns are about promotion and pay increase based on merit, dealing with poor performance, rewarding creativity and innovation, leadership generating high levels of motivation in the workforce, recognition for doing a good job, lack of satisfaction with various component policies and procedures and lack of information about what is going on with the organization.^[21][22][23]

See also

• Jake Brahm
• Brian Doyle
• Heimatschutz
• Container Security Initiative
• National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
• US-VISIT (United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology)
• National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), Ft Detrick, MD
• Shadow Wolves
• US-CERT

Notes

References

• Analysis. Analysis for the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Retrieved on 2006-04-06.
• Media Resources. Department of Homeland Security Media Resources. Retrieved on 2006-04-06.
• Most Recent Enforcement of Deportations by the Department of Homeland Security.
• President Bush’s Plan for the Upcoming Comprehensive Immigration Reform for the Department of Homeland Security.

External links

• United States Department of Homeland Security
• Federal Emergency Management Agency
• U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security homepage
• The White House - Homeland Security
• US-VISIT (United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology)
• ANSI Homeland Security Standards Panel (ANSI-HSSP)
• DHS website to promote readiness to defend against attack
• HSToday
• 'DHS plots maritime awareness roadmap', April 2006
• [https://www.firstrespondertraining.gov/rtdc/ First Responder Training]

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•  • [ e] Agencies under the United States Department of Homeland Security

Secretary of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Coast Guard • Immigration and Customs Enforcement • Citizenship and Immigration Services • Customs and Border Protection • Federal Emergency Management Agency • Federal Law Enforcement Training Center • Secret Service • Office of Operations Coordination • Transportation Security Administration Under Secretary of Homeland Security for National Protection and Programs Office of Cyber Security and Communications • National Communications System • National Cyber Security Division • Office of Infrastructure Protection • Office of Intergovernmental Programs • Office of Risk Management and Analysis • US-VISIT Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology Explosives Division • Chemical and Biological Division • Border and Maritime Security Division • Command, Control, and Interoperability Division • Human Factors Division • Infrastructure/Geophysical Division • Environmental Measurements Laboratory Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Management

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