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GCN Home > 06/21/04 issue

Mission gap: A special report on the Homeland Security Department

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

Systems work underscores how far DHS is from fulfilling its promise

Two years after coming into being, the Homeland Security Department is still a vast construction site, a loose amalgamation of 22 extant and newly created agencies strewn across the landscape with no common infrastructure.

No one said it would be easy.

From the outset, assembling DHS represented a massive, next-to-impossible undertaking.

“This reorganization of government has presented the biggest ‘change management’ challenge of all time,” DHS deputy secretary James Loy acknowledged last month in testimony before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

“Never before have we witnessed a full-scale government divestiture, merger, acquisition and startup all coming together at once—certainly not on this scale,” he told the committee. “Neither have we seen a consolidation of this size occur with national importance and urgency and in such a short amount of time.”

The General Accounting Office said much the same thing in a report last year: “The creation of DHS represents one of the largest and most complex restructurings in the federal government. The size, complexity and importance of the effort make the challenge especially daunting and incomparably critical to the nation’s security.”

In this special report, GCN takes a look at the gaps between the promise and the reality of DHS’ systems, focusing on five key areas: border and transportation security, information sharing, back-office operations, enterprise architecture and consolidation, and initiatives with state and local organizations.

By all accounts, IT and efficient management are critical to transforming a variety of programs and missions into a high-performance, focused organization.

IT will provide a consolidated and integrated framework for that transformation.

But the hurdles ahead for streamlining the department’s IT operations are formidable.

“The challenge facing the IT function of DHS is very complex,” Loy said. “Rationalizing disparate technologies with conflicting business rules, consolidating data centers and networks, getting the right information to border agents, preventing cyberattacks against our mission-critical systems, or even having a common e-mail system must be achieved to help detect and deter future terrorist attacks.”

In a recent status report, the DHS inspector general agreed: “IT remains a major management challenge for the department. IT systems and tools are fundamental to the programs and activities across the department used to accomplish its wide-ranging missions.”

More news on related topics: Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture, Homeland Security, IT Infrastructure, Management, IT Management, COOP / Telework



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