Former homeland security officials debate reorganizing DHS

Former top managers of the Homeland Security Department agreed Tuesday that a thorough review of the agency's structure is needed, but differed over how radical reforms should be.

The former senior management team has "a fairly lengthy list of recommendations" for reforming the department that includes establishing a centralized policy shop and creating a new agency to specifically focus on preparedness, former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge said.

Ridge said the recommendations were given to his successor, Michael Chertoff, who is conducting a review of the department to determine if any organizational changes should be made.

Ridge and seven other former DHS officials spoke at a forum Tuesday sponsored by IBM and American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation.

"I think Secretary Chertoff is doing exactly what he should do," Ridge told reporters. "I think he made a very constructive, very important [and] logical first step ... I think that's what leadership is."

Ridge emphasized that some problems stemmed from how Congress established the department in 2002 legislation.

"We'd be the first ones to admit we got the department as configured by Congress, not exactly as we proposed it. But that's the way it works," he said.

For example, the law creating the department did not establish a central, unified policy shop. Ridge said his team "saw a need for more than just a tactical, day-to-day, ad hoc, let's-deal-with-policy-on-the-Hill" approach.

"You need a robust policy shop right into the deputy secretary and the secretary for strategic planning," Ridge said.

In the absence of a centralized policy office, small policy shops sprang up in agencies throughout the department, former DHS Deputy Secretary James Loy said.

The department's proposed fiscal 2006 budget--the last that Ridge and his team developed--would create a new manager for policy, planning and international affairs. The budget leaves it up to the DHS secretary and Congress to decide if the position should be at the assistant secretary or undersecretary level.

Loy said Congress developed "an emotional piece of legislation" that attempted to get at the right structure for the department. But he said officials now have "opportunities to take stock of where you are, learn lessons from that experience and make adjustments as appropriate as you go forward."

Loy said the government's response to the 9/11 attacks probably would have been different had the attacks not been aviation-related.

"Had that 9/11 event occurred at a port or at a train station or in a pipeline system somewhere, my suggestion to all of us is that there would have been a dramatically different flow of dollars and revenue attended to grappling with whatever actually occurred on that day," Loy said.

The former managers also recommended creating an agency solely responsible for preparedness. Ridge said preparedness coordination is scattered throughout the department. He added that the DHS infrastructure protection division should probably be merged with the new agency.

"I'm confident that at least our successors are going to take a good, honest look at that," Ridge said. "Again, there's a game plan for it that the leadership team worked on for many, many months and awaits their review and potential application."

But Asa Hutchinson, the department's former undersecretary for border and transportation security, cautioned against a major reorganization. He said most private sector reorganizations take five years to work.

"I think a review is significant and the right thing to do, but we also have to keep in mind that just because something is not working perfectly out there does not necessarily mean you've got to change the whole organizational structure," he said. "So I think you need to focus on some appropriate changes, like the policy shop that's been mentioned, but also keep in mind that you've got to give people a chance to make the existing system and plan work."

As far as changes go, Hutchinson said the department's chief information officer should have more power.

He also supported the idea of creating a screening coordination office, which is proposed in the department's 2006 budget. The office would be responsible for several high-profile and expensive programs, such as the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology system, the department's Secure Flight effort and the Transportation Worker Identification Credentialing program.

"I think that is very, very important, and I think that is what is going to help provide the appropriate spending of money, the coordination of those functions," he said.

Some current and former DHS officials have suggested that the department should merge its bureaus of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. ICE, in particular, has been grappling with financial problems.

Ridge and Loy do not believe the bureaus should be merged now.

"I am not of the mind that today is a good time to merge CBP and ICE," Loy said. "Let them struggle a bit, if that's the right phrase, and sort of get it right over time. Now if, two years from now, we are really finding reasons other than budget reasons to address that, then so be it."

Ridge added: "Right now, I think there are much higher priorities and I'm not even sure it's needed ... That debate, if there's to be one, should be several years down the road."