Risk management principles such as performance management
could help the Department of Homeland Security allocate
resources, Comptroller General David Walker said in
testimony addressing the need for a “fundamental
reexamination of the base of government, the role that
performance budgeting tools can play in helping inform
agency activities and DHS’s use of performance
budgeting and risk management concepts.”
Walker, as in past reports and testimony, said the
nation faces a long-term fiscal imbalance and noted
there is a “critical need for the federal government
to reexamine the base of its programs, policies,
functions, and activities” — as well as carry out
periodic reexamination of major federal spending and
tax policies, according to GAO-05-824T.
He said management and performance reforms enacted by
Congress in the past 15 years have provided new tools
such as performance budgeting to support the
elimination of outmoded operations and to better align
operations with the demands of a changing world.
However, while performance budgeting can help policy
makers address how well programs contribute to stated
goals, it “cannot provide answers to every resource
question–particularly where allocation is a function
of competing values and interests that depend on
factors other than program performance,” said Walker.
He said DHS has called for using risk-based approaches
to prioritize its resource investments — but that a
comprehensive risk management framework including an
assessment of risk through threat, vulnerability, and
criticality assessments — “should be applied to guide
these decisions.”
