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Department of Homeland Security's Efforts Promise to Be the Biggest Change Management Job of All Time

By Todd Datz

December 01, 2002 — CIO —

THE DECLARATION OF INTEGRATION

I propose the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s by creating a new Department of Homeland Security. For the first time, we would have a single department whose primary mission is to secure our homeland.

-President George W. Bush, from his Homeland Security proposal to Congress, June 2002

The September 11 attacks unleashed a wave of antiterrorist actions by the federal government. Perhaps the most significant was President Bush’s call in June to form a massive new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) out of the many existing federal agencies that touch on aspects of national security. The House of Representatives took up the new legislation and quickly passed its version of the bill last summer. In the Senate, however, the bill became mired in a party squabble over the president’s request for power to hire and fire employees in the new department, with democrats unwilling to eliminate civil service protections. As winter loomed, debate continued in the Senate, with hopes that a compromise could be reached.

Yet the transformation of the federal government is already under way. President Bush created the Office of Homeland Security (OHS), a precursor to the larger department, by executive order in October 2001. Its skeleton crew of executives began scoping out the massive task of reorganizing the goovernment, on a scale not see since President Truman created the Department of Defense following World War II. Uncertain when the new department will come into being or even which agencies it will encompass, the leaders of OHS nonetheless will play a key role in coordinating the efforts of different arms of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, the private sector and the American people, in the fight against terrorism.

Making this mega-entity work, on the other hand, could be as difficult as trying to locate Osama bin Laden. Critics of the new department question whether bringing so many entities and people together into a huge, new bureaucracy is necessary. They wonder how willingly intelligence agencies such as the FBI and CIA, which remain outside DHS but are critical to its success, will share information. They worry that the reorganization will be too big an undertaking.

The success of the proposed department?and the security of the nation?will, in large part, hinge on IT. "Information technology is extremely important," says Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.). "It’s the thread that will weave the new department together."

 

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