Chertoff outlines emerging strategy for assessing homeland security risks

The Homeland Security Department will spend two to three months conducting a comprehensive review of all policies and operations to determine if organizational changes need to be made, Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.

"Risk management must guide our decision-making as we examine how we can best organize to prevent, respond and recover from an attack," Chertoff said during a speech in Washington.

According to the secretary, the department will use a combination of threat, vulnerability and consequence analysis as a general model for assessing risk and deciding what protective measures, if any, should be taken.

Two weeks ago, Chertoff announced that he would review all of the department's organization, operations and policies.

"How do we avoid becoming beguiled by the risks we have already experienced, fighting the last war, and distracted from those that our enemy might be planning in the future?" he asked Wednesday. "Over the course of the next 60 to 90 days, this comprehensive review will examine what we need to do [and] what we are doing without regard to component structures or programmatic categories" that currently exist.

"Simply put, old categories, old jurisdictions and old turf will not define our objectives or the measure of our achievements," he said. "What should drive our policies and operations and the way we are organized is this strategic matrix of threat, vulnerability and consequence. And so, we will look at everything through that prism, and we will be adjusting structure, operations and policies to execute this strategy."

Chertoff told reporters after the speech he is very concerned about information getting out into the public prematurely. For example, he said it was a mistake for Hawaiian officials to publish on their Web site this week a draft copy of a homeland security report outlining how terrorists might strike the United States.

He said, however, that the department will continue to share information with state and local partners, adding that the government is getting better at information management.

The Homeland Security Department is in a unique position, the secretary noted, because much of its work is virtual and includes people and organizations outside of the federal government.

"Unlike most departments, only a portion of what we do is operating in the physical world," he said. "A large part of the department is in the virtual world. It's a network of information and processes that rely upon people who are not part of our department and on assets we do not own-state and local assets."

He added: "The ability to create a virtual network and bind all of that together in some ways is the most important part of our work and actually is the greatest resource in that work."