The House Homeland Security Committee recently marked up a bill to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the first time since its conception in 2002. Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, stated that the reauthorization bill makes “DHS more efficient by consolidating and eliminating unnecessary programs and offices.”
This is an excellent step in reforming the operational structure of DHS as a federal agency. Congress needs to also reform and streamline their own oversight roles over the agency. This outcome now a possibility, as McCaul announced last fall that he will work with his colleagues to reduce the number of committees with jurisdiction over DHS.
When DHS was rolled out back in 2003, 22 separate government agencies with over 170,000 employees were combined into one. The enormity of creating a new major government agency entailed defining the roles for these agencies and meshing their independent cultures, acquisition and procurement operations, HR, and IT systems. More than a decade later, the department of has made significant strides toward becoming “One DHS” but many functional organizational issues still remain and are stifling the performance and morale of those who work at the agency.
The mission diversity, priorities and cross-cutting capabilities of the consolidated 22 legacy agencies into a single department also created legislative jurisdictional issues from the inception. The 9/11 Commission, whose input was provided as guidance for the establishment of DHS, listed streamlining Congressional oversight as one of their 41 recommendations. In 2004, a dual think tank CSIS-BENS Task Force on Congressional Oversight provided an excellent overview of the bureaucratic challenges. The report noted that 88 committees had some amount of jurisdiction over various aspects of homeland security prior to the creation of DHS. In contrast DOD, 10 times the size of DHS, reports to only 36 committees.
There is a famous chart that accompanied that study showing a tangled spider web of lines of the various management components and sub-agencies lines of reporting to those committees. I used that chart as a visual aid when I taught a course “Homeland Security and Congress” for two years at SAIS John Hopkins University and my colleagues at the DHS Office of Legislative Affairs (including me) had that chart taped to our walls as an operative blueprint poster for our outreach work. For the most part, the chart is still applicable, but now the oversight has grown and DHS reports to 119 different committees.
The implications of so much oversight is that with so much time, resources and effort spent on duplicative hearings, reporting requirements and answering Congressional queries, is that DHS’s readiness has been diminished. This is because the leadership in the components have had to reduce their time spent on operational issues and meeting emerging threats to facilitate congressional requests. Moreover, the various committees’ competing interests in determining the vision and reporting requirements for the agency components is not uniform because of the parochial, regional and issue specific focus of the committees themselves.
As DHS reauthorization is finally being addressed by Congress, the time is also opportune to consider the streamlining of Congressional oversight over the Department of Homeland Security. Efficient oversight will lead to better morale and more importantly, a better homeland security posture and capability.
Charles “Chuck” Brooks is the vice president for government relations and marketing for Sutherland Government Solutions. He served at the Department of Homeland Security as the first director of legislative affairs for the Science and Technology Directorate. Find him on Twitter at @ChuckDBrooks.
Time to streamline Congressional oversight of DHS [Commentary]
