Management directorate left intact under DHS overhaul plans

Homeland Security's management directorate will emerge from the departmental reorganization announced Wednesday largely unscathed, despite criticisms of its current structure.

Undersecretary for Management Janet Hale will keep her position, and the department's five "line of business" chiefs-the chief financial officer, chief information officer, chief procurement officer, chief human capital officer and chief administrative officer-will continue to report to her. They also will continue to follow the five October 2004 management directives that hold them, and the heads of major DHS bureaus, jointly responsible for integrating technology and administrative services across the department.

Outside observers, including officials at the Government Accountability Office and former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, have said that such a reporting structure could leave the business chiefs with too little authority. The CIO, for example, should report directly to the DHS deputy secretary or secretary instead of the management undersecretary, some critics have argued.

The DHS Financial Accountability Act (H.R. 4259), signed into law in October 2004, requires the CFO to be confirmed by the Senate and to report directly to DHS Secretary Chertoff "regarding financial management matters," said Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., the law's author.

"From what I have seen, the new structure, as presented in the DHS organizational chart, is not in compliance with the [act]," Platts wrote in a July 13 letter to Chertoff. "If DHS is not instituting this change as required by law, I believe DHS has missed a valuable opportunity to strengthen the role of its CFO and to improve its ability to deliver on its mission."

The House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Finance and Accountability plans to hold a hearing on Homeland Security's compliance with the financial accountability law in late July, Platts noted.

But Jim Flyzik of Guerra, Kiviat, Flyzik & Associates, a Potomac, Md.-based consultancy, said that DHS officials can work with the existing structure--at least in the IT arena. "The real issue will be to see how well the CIO works with the undersecretary [for management]," he said. Flyzik, a former Treasury Department CIO and a former adviser to Tom Ridge in the White House Office of Homeland Security, has said he would support a structure that allows the CIO to report to the deputy secretary or secretary. But he said Wednesday that he wasn't particularly surprised at Chertoff's decision to maintain the status quo.

"Most people watching felt like it could go either way," Flyzik said. The CIO can make progress at integrating technology across the department so long as he is empowered by the undersecretary for management and the deputy secretary to "do things on an enterprisewide basis," he said.