DHS Aspires To Be More Like Defense 

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Reported by Stew Magnuson 

When Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff casts his eyes across the Potomac at the Pentagon, apparently he likes what he sees.

Embedded inside the 2009 budget request are several proposals that show just how much DHS wants to emulate Defense.

First up is a $1.65 million request to develop the first “Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.”

“This builds on the process that the Defense Department uses in dealing with national security issues, with a Quadrennial Defense Security Review,” Chertoff said when announcing the 2009 budget proposals.

Next, the department requested $3.1 million for the chief procurement officer to enhance the acquisition intern program, which recruits, trains and certifies the workforce that oversees the development and purchasing of technology.

“I am constantly reminded by Congress of the fact that there’s concern about our over-reliance on contractors to manage contracts,” he said. To remedy this, the department needs to build a corps of acquisition experts, he said.

“We need to have money to hire those people. Continually trying to punish us by cutting our management budget in order to induce us to hire more people is literally working at cross purposes,” he said.

Congress of late has been critical of three technology programs: the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office’s radiation portal monitor program, the Coast Guard’s Deepwater modernization program and the Project 28 demonstration to set up a virtual fence on the Arizona-Mexico border.

A reporter asked Chertoff if he was perhaps mimicking some of the Pentagon’s more notorious business practices when dealing with troubled acquisitions. Namely, sticking with the same contractors while simultaneously giving the programs substantial raises. The radiation portal under the proposed budget would get a $67.7 million boost from the last fiscal year, and Deepwater would rise by $200 million. A pilot program to expand the long-delayed Project 28 to the northern border was funded by Congress. DHS chose to stick with the same contractor, Boeing.

“We’re going to have to move forward with this technology,” he said. “We want to do it intelligently, but we also don’t want to delay it to the point that we wind up risking lives.”

Finally, borrowing from the Pentagon’s jointness doctrine, DHS and the General Services Administration have requested $466 million to build a new homeland security headquarters in Washington, D.C. that would consolidate disparate elements and house the Coast Guard and other components of the department.

“This is critical if we are to foster that ‘one DHS’ culture,” he said.
Don’t be surprised if the architect draws up a blueprint of a five-sided building.