United States Department of Homeland Security Totally Explained

Everything about The United States Department Of Homeland Security totally explained

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), commonly known in the United States as "Homeland Security", is a Cabinet department of the U.S. federal government with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the U.S. 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 and assumed its duties. In doing so, it divided the enforcement and services functions into two separate and new agencies -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
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. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Energy.

Establishment

In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush announced the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to coordinate "homeland security" efforts. The office was headed by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who assumed 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:
ť 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.
   Ridge began his duties as OHS director on October 8, 2001. On March 12, 2002, the Homeland Security Advisory System, a color-coded terrorism risk advisory scale, was created as the result of 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 tied in to 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 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. 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. Elizabeths Hospital campus in Southeast Washington. The earliest DHS would begin moving to St. Elizabeths is 2012.
   The move is being championed by District of Columbia officials because of the positive economic impact it'll have on historically depressed Southeast Washington, which is also the venue for the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, scheduled to open in 2008. The move has been criticized by historic preservationists, who claim the revitalization plans will destroy dozens of historic buildings on the campus. Community activists have criticized the plans because the facility will remain walled off and have little interaction with the surrounding area.

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 in March 2002 and launched in February 2003, just before the launch of the Iraq War. 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" to protect themselves. As a result, the sales of duct tape skyrocketed and DHS was criticized for being too alarmist. The site was promoted with banner ads containing automatic audio components on commercial web sites.

National Incident Management System

On March 1, 2004, the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was created. The stated purpose was to provide a consistent incident management approach for federal, state, local, and tribal governments. Under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-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.

National Response Framework

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.
On January 22, 2008, the National Response Framework was published in the Federal Register as an updated replacement of the NRP, effective on March 22, 2008.

Criticism

Computer security management

Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) has been an interest of the United States National Security Agency since 2001. In an undated paper, NSA authors had hoped that operating systems would be the answer to a problem they described: "Public awareness of the need for security in computing systems is growing as critical services are becoming increasingly dependent on interconnected computing systems. National infrastructure components such as the electric power, telecommunication and transportation systems can no longer function without networks of computers." Threats to computer security have outpaced the Department of Homeland Security's ability to manage such an environment. According to F-Secure, "As much malware [was] produced in 2007 as in the previous 20 years altogether."

Excess, waste, and ineffectiveness

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 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 couldn't be found), and iPods ostensibly for use in "data storage".

Data Mining (ADVISE)

The Associated Press reported on September 5, 2007 that DHS had 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. 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 isn't 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.

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;

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

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