House panel to set performance goals for Homeland Security

Republican leaders of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security said Wednesday they will set performance standards for the Homeland Security Department, but will seek to avoid the recent mistake of creating arbitrary or unrealistic goals.

The committee chairman and a group of subcommittee heads said they will meet with DHS managers during the next two months to develop performance measures to gauge the success of homeland security programs and policies as the department moves into its second year of existence.

The measures will affect everything from the management and personnel of the department to which programs get funded, the lawmakers said.

"I think this may be the most important thing we can do, trying to develop measurements seeing if the department is really making the country safer," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.

Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., declined to speculate about specific measurements the committee might establish, saying they will depend on meetings during the next two months. He said the panel wants to help the department prioritize its projects, set goals for key efforts, measure progress toward those goals, and make corrections on an ongoing basis. The committee plans to hold hearings early next year and then write new legislation covering the department by next September.

However, Cox said the panel wants to avoid recent mistakes of setting unattainable goals and deadlines that might stifle the department. For example, he said Congress moved too fast in setting mandates for the Transportation Security Administration, which has been plagued with problems since it was created two years ago.

"I don't think we want to be guilty of imposing slapdash requirements on the department with arbitrary congressional deadlines," Cox said.

Over the next year, the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Science, and Research and Development will set goals for efforts to deploy countermeasures to terrorist attacks. The Subcommittee on Infrastructure and Border Security will establish standards for expanding the department's port security initiatives to other countries. The Subcommittee on Preparedness and Response will create goals for measuring the success of first-responder programs.

Cox also announced Wednesday that he reached an agreement with ranking committee member Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, to move the Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act (H.R. 3266) forward. The first legislation Cox has written as committee chair, the bill is controversial because it would require DHS to award its first-responder grants solely on the basis of how likely a given location is to be attacked by terrorists. Cox said the Subcommittee on Preparedness and Response would mark up the legislation Thursday.