Keeping Track

Shane Harris' story about the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS) offers a parable about all the problems that attend the rollout of new programs to track the activities of people whom the government believes need tracking.

There's the hurry up problem. The SEVIS system has been full of glitches, evidence that it was rolled out before it was ready for prime time. It might have been possible to move quickly if the Immigration and Naturalization Service had been doing a better job of keeping track of immigrants instead of ignoring its enforcement duties for many years. And management problems remain: As we went to press, Homeland Security hadn't even named an official to oversee SEVIS, thus by default assigning the job to contractor Electronic Data Systems. Campus advisers seeking to correct anomalies dial up help desk personnel employed by EDS, who often are not fully conversant with immigration regulations.

There's the budget problem. As with other homeland security programs, the federal government has been happier to define the need for SEVIS than to fully fund its costs. The University of Wisconsin has estimated compliance costs at more than $300,000 a year-and is looking to its foreign students to foot the bill.

And there's the snooping problem. SEVIS has had a chilling effect on student dissent, Harris reports. And campus advisers don't like being thrust into policing roles.

These problems are likely to attend other government monitoring efforts, particularly Homeland Security's planned U.S. VISIT system, which will collect and share information about each of the 35 million visitors who enter the United States each year.

The executive branch's assertion of new powers to gather information about people, to monitor, arrest and detain have proceeded apace even in the face of substantial opposition. War and terrorism have strengthened the hand of the White House in this instance-though not as much in President Bush's separate moves to grab unprecedented spending authority. Congress has resisted giving Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the budget freedom they have sought, as David Baumann reports this month. In this new chapter of the ancient struggle between White House and Congress, the legislature has the upper hand.

Money to meet new security demands is also a source of strain between Washington and the states. Bioterrorism threats are a case in point, as Katherine McIntire Peters reports this month. Washington has sent about $900 million to state capitals in the past year to shore up the public health system, but in cash-strapped jurisdictions such as New York City, the need is much greater.

Relations between Washington and lower levels of government are also strained in the government's attempt to meet the threat of smallpox. As Matthew Weinstock reports, federal health officials have had great difficulty persuading health care workers across the country to accept vaccination.

Governing these days means dealing with such strains in every arena. Even in the popular Head Start program, Shawn Zeller reports, strong arguments have erupted over the Bush administration's desire to emphasize literacy training-and to hand over authority to state governments long distrusted by the anti-poverty lobby.