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The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), commonly known as Homeland Security, is a Cabinet department of the Federal Government of the United States with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the United States from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters.
With approximately 184,000 employees, DHS is the third largest cabinet department in the U.S. federal government after the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs. Homeland security policy is coordinated at the White House by the Homeland Security Council, with Frances Townsend as the Homeland Security Advisor. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Energy.
Initial efforts after 9/11On September 20, 2001, in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush announced the establishment of an Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to coordinate "homeland security" efforts, to be headed by Governor Tom Ridge with the title of Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. The name is reminiscent of the British WW2-era Department of Home Security. The official announcement stated:
Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge took up his duties as OHS director on October 8, 2001.
In January 2003, the office was merged into the Department of Homeland Security and the White House Homeland Security Council, both of which were created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Homeland Security Council, similar in nature to the National Security Council, retains a policy coordination and advisory role and is led by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. Creation of DHSThe department was established on November 25, 2002, by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. After months of discussion about employee rights and benefits and "rider" portions of the bill, it was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush. It was intended to consolidate U.S. executive branch organizations related to "homeland security" into a single Cabinet agency. Ridge was named secretary on January 24, 2003 and began naming his chief deputies. DHS officially began operations on January 24, 2003, but most of the department's component agencies were not transferred into the new Department until March 1. It was the largest government reorganization in 50 years (since the United States Department of Defense was created). After establishing the basic structure of DHS and working to integrate its components and get the department functioning, Ridge announced his resignation on November 30, 2004, following the re-election of President Bush. Bush initially nominated former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik as his successor, but on December 10, Kerik withdrew his nomination citing personal reasons and saying it "would not be in the best interests" of the country for him to pursue the post. On January 11, 2005, President Bush nominated federal judge Michael Chertoff to succeed Ridge. Chertoff was confirmed on February 15, 2005, by a vote of 98–0 in the U.S. Senate. He was sworn in the same day. Image:DHS appropriations signing.jpg President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2004. Controversy about adoption centered on whether the FBI and the CIA should be incorporated in part or in whole (both were not). The bill itself was also controversial for the presence of unrelated riders, as well as eliminating some standard civil service and labor protections from employees of the department. President Bush wanted the right to fire an employee within Homeland Security immediately for security reasons, for incompetence, or insubordination. Then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle wanted an appeals process that could take up to 18 months or as little as one month. A federal court injunction has blocked many aspects of the new personnel system as they relate to employee pay and discipline. Plans to proceed with the performance management aspects of the system are continuing. Organization
Major Agencies
As part of the reorganization within the department, on March 1, 2004 the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was created. The idea behind was to provide a consistent nationwide approach for Federal, State. local and tribal governments. Under Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-5 all Federal departments were required to adopt the NIMS and to use it in their individual domestic incident management and emergency prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation program and activities. A few months later in December 2004 the National Response Plan (NRP) was created, in an attempt to align Federal coordination structures, capabilities, and resources into a unified, all-discipline, and all-hazards approach to domestic incident management. The NRP was built on the template of the NIMS. HeadquartersSince its inception, the Department has had its temporary headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Nebraska Avenue Complex, a naval facility.[2] No permanent headquarters location has been chosen yet, though rumors have circulated that the Federal government will construct a new headquarters for the Department near the old General Hospital complex in Southeast Washington. [3] GrantsDHS provides grants through a variety of programs to states, localities, first responders, and universities. CREATE - Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events - the first university center of excellence funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is an interdisciplinary national research center based at the University of Southern California. The Center comprises a team of experts from across the country, including partnerships with New York University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ready.govImage:Ready gov.gif Ready.gov program logo Soon after the formation of Department of Homeland Security, the Martin Agency of Richmond, Virginia provided pro bono work to create "Ready.gov", a readiness website. The site and materials were conceived as early as March 2002 but were launched in February of 2003, just before the launch of the Iraq War [4] [5] [6]. One of the first announcements that garnered widespread public attention to this campaign was one by Tom Ridge in which he stated that in the case of a chemical attack, citizens should use duct tape and plastic sheeting to build a homemade bunker, or "sheltering in place" [7] [8] to protect themselves. As a result, the sales of duct tape skyrocketed and DHS received criticism that they were being too alarmist. [9] [10] CriticismThe Department of Homeland Security has been dogged by persistent criticism over excessive bureaucracy, waste, and ineffectiveness. In 2003, the department came under fire after the media revealed that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS with responsibilities for sensitive national security databases, had in fact obtained her advanced computer science degrees through a diploma mill in a small town in Wyoming. The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the Government Accountability Office revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price many of which later could not be found, and iPods ostensibly for use in "data storage". [11][12][13][14] The department's initial response to Hurricane Katrina was castigated by its critics as inadequate, a charge later acknowledged by the Bush administration. Following the discovery by British authorities in August 2006 of a plot to destroy commercial airliners using liquid explosives, it was revealed that DHS had consistently failed to spend research and development money on new airport screening methods, and that funds for explosive detection equipment were re-routed by the Bush Administration to cover budget shortfalls elsewhere. In August 2006, a bipartisan group of Senators on the Appropriations Committee described the Sciences & Technology Directorate, the research arm of DHS, as a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course".[15] Employee MoraleIn July, 2006, the Office of Personnel Management conducted a survey of federal employees in all 36 federal agencies on job satisfaction and how they felt their respective agency was headed. DHS was last or near to last in every category including;
The low scores were attributed to major concerns about basic supervision, management and leadership within the agency. Examples from the survey reveal most concerns are about promotion and pay increase based on merit, dealing with poor performance, rewarding creativity and innovation, leadership generating high levels of motivation in the workforce, recognition for doing a good job, lack of satisfaction with various component policies and procedures and lack of information about what is going on with the organization.[16][17] [18] See also
References
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