The Department of Homeland Security has made mixed progress
standardizing and integrating inherited IT systems and
management approaches, while maintaining and improving IT
support in the near term, the Government Accountability
Office has said.
It said that DHS is “instituting seven information and
technology management disciplines” that are integral to an
effective management structure, but that institutionalizing
them remains a work in progress.
That’s to be expected given the diversity of the agencies
that were cobbled together to form DHS, yet without fully
institutionalizing “these governance elements,” DHS is at
risk of less than optimal support of its “corporate mission
needs,” and failing to meet “cost, schedule, capability,
and benefit commitments,” according to GAO-04-702.
The report said DHS’s draft IT strategic plan lacks
“explicit goals, performance measures, milestones, and
knowledge of whether it has properly positioned IT staff
with the right skills to accomplish these things.”