Homeland Security vulnerable to waste, taxpayer advocacy group says

An advocacy group representing 335,000 taxpayers warned in a report released Monday that lawmakers and oversight agencies must not allow the new Homeland Security Department to turn into a "costly agency that performs many tasks poorly and no single task well."

Differences in organization, culture, personnel management and technology among the agencies that are to merge into the Homeland Security Department will make the agency susceptible to waste and inefficiency, the report issued by the National Taxpayers Union said.

As the Homeland Security Department takes shape, the General Accounting Office and agency inspectors general need to monitor the growth of the new department to make sure that it develops clear management goals and finds ways to reach them without adding to the bureaucracy, Jim Tyrell, a NTU policy analyst and the report's author, recommended. He also suggested that lawmakers place a cap on the department's staff size and costs, to protect taxpayers and avoid micromanagement.

The department will have a hard time establishing a sleek organizational structure that avoids bureaucracy, the report said. For instance, some of the agencies that will be incorporated into the new department have headquarters in Washington but rely on offices in distant satellite locations.

Customs alone has 20 port offices, 20 Special Agents in Charge offices, seven science labs and 18 internal affairs offices scattered across the country, the report said, making the prospect of efficient coordination and information-sharing within the new department less likely.

Many of the agencies going into the new department already have problems with their own structures, the report added. The Immigration and Naturalization Service suffers from a confusing chain of command and wastes roughly $100 million each year by inefficiently managing the deportation of criminal immigrants, according to Tyrell.

Funding will also cause problems, because departments will be reluctant to relinquish budgetary control to a central authority, the report predicted. And in addition, the agencies will have to be willing to merge computer systems, some of which are already falling into disrepair. "Combining several computer systems that already fall well behind in critical technological necessities raises questions over whether a merger can possibly improve computer chaos or simply create more confusion," Tyrell wrote.

If these issues are not resolved, the new department might not be worth taxpayers' money, the report said. As evidence of the public's skepticism, Tyrell pointed to a recent Gallup poll that shows only 13 percent of Americans think a the new department will actually protect them.

But in the best scenario, the department will overcome potential pitfalls of inefficiency and waste, becoming a "miracle rather than a migraine for taxpayers," the report concluded.