The Department of Homeland Security needs a comprehensive
and sustained approach to integrate the various
management systems of the 22 agencies that joined to
create the massive department, the Government
Accountability Office has said in a new report.
It said significant management challenges exist in areas
such as human capital and IT, and that while the
department has made progress its approach still needs
“better leverage.”
GAO compared DHS’s efforts against three key practices
it associates with successful mergers and
transformations, “setting implementation goals and a
time line to build momentum and show progress, dedicating
an implementation team to manage the transformation, and
ensuring top leadership drives it” – significant for
building the infrastructure DHS needs in this early stage.
Further, DHS’s business transformation office, which
reports to the under secretary for management and helps
monitor and look for interdependencies among the
individual functional integration efforts could be more
effective if it had the “responsibility and authority to
help the under secretary set priorities and make strategic
decisions” as well as help implement the integration,
according to GAO–05–139.
As in earlier reports, GAO said a chief management
officer could “help elevate, integrate, and institutionalize
DHS’s management initiatives,” but noted that the under
secretary for management has some of the same characteristics
of that office.
Congress may need to either give the under secretary
additional authority or create a new post closer to a
COO or CMO, the accountability office said.
