By Calvin Biesecker
When the Department of Homeland Security released its Bottom-Up Review (BUR) in July, it was met with criticism from key department followers in Congress for lacking specifics on programmatic and organizational needs, but two homeland security experts say that “reading between the lines” shows what future budget priorities will likely be.
For one, the BUR discusses the need to improve on its various programs that involve screening based on biographical and biometric information and assessing risk of individuals, Rick Nelson, director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, and Adam Isles, a Raytheon [RTN] official who is serving as a non-resident senior associate with CSIS, say in a CSIS commentary released yesterday.
“An integrated DHS information sharing architecture is to be developed to allow for consolidated vetting, and DHS also commits to building recurrent screening (so that benefits are revoked as new threat information becomes available) into programs that don’t already do so,” Nelson and Isles say. They also say that the BUR “hints” at aligning credentialing standards for airport and surface transportation workers.
The BUR also points directly to other areas that will receive attention, the commentary says. These include:
- Putting more resources and analytic capability into cybersecurity “to improve adversary identification, advance deterrence strategies, and promote better understanding of emerging cyber threats;”
- Better procuring of cybersecurity technology using new acquisition models such as leasing and technical service agreements, and developing secondary markets for the technology among state, local, tribal and territorial governments;
- Realigning the field services of the department’s component agencies “into a single regional structure (no small task)” and “More importantly” applying the Joint Interagency Task Force-South model that exists within the Defense Department’s Southern Command nationally;
- Improving the Federal Protective Service to “better match mission requirements to the risk profile of federal buildings;
- And creating a National Fusion Center Program Management Office to “institutionalize the National Fusion Center Network,” they say.
Nelson and Isles say that the examples of DHS’ budget priorities outlined in the BUR indicate that the department seems to be trying to be “generally smarter” about using the mission data it collects across DHS to better size risks and to improve the relationship at the various headquarters functions such as planning, budgeting and acquisition with the more mature counterparts at the component agencies to “have an effective requirements planning process.”
The commentary commends the BUR for prioritizing the need for greater international collaboration in light of the failed Christmas Day underwear bomber incident last December. This collaboration will include “information sharing and technology development and expanded DHS-related training and technical assistance,” it says.
The BUR is meant to be a link between the department’s first strategic review, which was released earlier this year, and upcoming budgets.
The FY ’12 DHS budget request will help identify what the department’s priorities really are, Nelson and Isles say. Better yet, would be public disclosure of the next Future Years Homeland Security Plan (FYHSP), they say.
“For an administration committed to greater transparency in government decision-making, publicly releasing the next FYHSP budget figures would be a useful way of laying out where the department’s sustained priorities will lie,” they say.