GAO Criticizes Homeland Security's Efforts to Fulfill Its Mission

GAO analysts acknowledged that DHS's enormous size and complexity -- spanning 220,000 employees and 22 component agencies -- make the challenge "especially daunting and important." They also said they do not intend to suggest that the DHS should have already met all expectations. "Successful transformations of large organizations, even those faced with less strenuous reorganizations than DHS, can take at least 5 to 7 years to achieve," the GAO stated.

Still, although prior studies focused on the DHS's many organizational problems -- leading Chertoff to direct the department to sharpen its focus after he took office in February 2005 -- the report indicates that it still has difficulty carrying out policy decisions and setting priorities.

The DHS met only five of 24 criteria for emergency preparedness, failing to implement a national response plan or develop a program to improve emergency radio communications. The department met just one of six science and technology goals, such as developing research and development plans and assessing emerging threats; and two of 15 computer integration targets, the report says.

Moderate progress, which the GAO defined as taking action on more than half of identified goals, was made in only five of 14 areas -- immigration enforcement; aviation, land and transportation security; securing critical facilities such as bridges, power plants and computer networks; and property management -- and substantial progress in just one, maritime and port security.

DHS Undersecretary for Management Paul A. Schneider said that the GAO should have graded the department higher on 42 of 171 directives. The GAO relied on a flawed methodology that "fails to accurately reflect the Department's progress in many specific program areas," he said in a formal 42-page response.

Schneider also said investigators relied on outdated reports, applied vague, shifting and inconsistent grading standards, and set up an unfair, "pass-fail" approach to assessing a spectrum of progress that should be expected to take many years.

"The GAO Report treats all of the performance expectations as if they were of equal significance," Schneider said. "In contrast, the Department uses a risk-based approach to consider its overall priorities," adding that the DHS has met 37 of 50 objectives in securing transportation modes, which were targeted in the 2001 attacks.

"It's a very damning report," said Michael Greenberger, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security and a Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. "If you look at these grades, nearly one-third fall into the lowest category, and among those third are critically important, almost foundational tasks upon which the others rest."