DHS Unity of Effort
Big news over at the Department of Homeland Security. Now in its 11th year, the Department continues to be operationally disaggregated into its component parts, with little of the cross-cutting economies of scale and efficiencies of effort that were a promised result of its creation. Prior Secretaries have tried to tame the process with limited success. It appears that Secretary Jeh Johnson is going to try again -- and he looks to have a pretty solid plan of action. That, at least, is the impression I get from his
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Big news over at the Department of Homeland Security. Now in its 11th year, the Department continues to be operationally disaggregated into its component parts, with little of the cross-cutting economies of scale and efficiencies of effort that were a promised result of its creation. Prior Secretaries have tried to tame the process with limited success. It appears that Secretary Jeh Johnson is going to try again -- and he looks to have a pretty solid plan of action. That, at least, is the impression I get from his memorandum yesterday on DHS Unity of Effort. It appears that Secretary Johnson is going to try and mold DHS management processes into a more coherent process. Most notably, the Secretary has suspended development of the DHS Strategic Play for FY14-18, pending a complete review. For years, I've thought that DHS's biggest problem was its lack of a coherent centralized management structure. This is a step in the right direction.
Paul Rosenzweig is the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, a homeland security consulting company. He formerly served as deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security. He is a professorial lecturer in law at George Washington University, a senior fellow in the Tech, Law & Security program at American University, and a board member of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy.
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