United States Government Accountability Office

GAO Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on Management, 

Investigations, and Oversight, Committee 

on Homeland Security, U.S. House of 

Representatives 

HOMELAND SECURITY

Guidance from Operations 

Directorate Will Enhance 

Collaboration among 

Departmental Operations 

Centers 

Statement of Eileen R. Larence, Director 

Homeland Security and Justice Issues 

For Release on Delivery

Expected at 12:00 p.m. EDT

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 

 

GAO-07-683T 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

June 20, 2007

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Guidance from Operations Directorate 

May Enhance Collaboration among 

Departmental Operations Centers 

Highlights of GAO-07-683T, a testimony 

before the Subcommittee on 

Management, Investigations and 

Oversight, Committee on Homeland 

Security, U.S. House of Representatives 

This testimony summarizes GAO’s 

October 2006 report on the 

Department of Homeland

Security’s (DHS) operations

centers—centers run by three DHS

components and operating 

24 hours a day, 7 days a week,

365 days a year to conduct

monitoring and surveillance 

activities of potential terrorist 

activities and other crises. 

Specifically, GAO assessed the

extent to which the centers 

implemented key practices GAO’s

work has shown will enhance and 

sustain collaboration.

In addition, GAO is aware of

Congress’s concerns about the 

performance of certain DHS 

components with regard to 

situational awareness during

Hurricane Katrina, and the recent

efforts made in response to these 

concerns identified in hurricane

after-action studies and reports.

Because these efforts to some 

extent affect DHS’s response to the 

recommendations made in GAO’s

previous report, this testimony 

briefly describes some of the steps

DHS reported that it has taken to

address situational awareness 

problems Katrina exposed.

However, because these actions 

are relatively new, it is too early to 

assess how well they are being 

implemented. 

To complete this work, GAO spoke 

to DHS officials and reviewed

relevant documentation. 

The DHS operations centers GAO studied—the Air and Marine Operations 

Center, the National Targeting Center, the Transportation Security

Operations Center, and the National Operations Center—could improve 

implementation of the key practices GAO identified as having a positive 

effect on inter-agency collaboration. These key practices include (1) defining

common outcomes and joint strategies; (2) assessing each center’s needs to 

leverage resources; (3) defining the roles and responsibilities of the 

personnel conducting surveillance activities; (4) establishing compatible 

standards, policies, and procedures for using DHS’s primary information 

sharing network; (5) developing mechanisms to monitor and evaluate results 

of joint operations; and (6) reinforcing accountability by recognizing joint 

efforts and outcomes achieved in annual performance plans and reports. The 

Operations Directorate, established in November 2005 to improve 

operational efficiency and coordination, provides DHS with an opportunity 

to more fully implement these key practices by providing guidance to the 

operations centers. Although GAO recommended that the Directorate 

provide this guidance, DHS stated that the Directorate does not have control 

over the component operations centers; therefore, it has not provided 

guidance to improve collaboration among the centers. 

According to DHS, it has given priority to fixing issues that affect situational 

awareness and its ability to respond to national incidents and disasters, such 

as Hurricane Katrina. The actions in response to Katrina include establishing 

standard roles and procedures for reporting information during a major 

incident and creating a Web-based tool to provide a common view of critical 

information during a crisis. While DHS has not fully responded to GAO’s 

recommendation for implementing key collaborative practices, it maintains 

that the initiatives it has implemented since Katrina will improve 

collaboration and create an environment to address the recommendations in 

the future. 

Staff Conducting Surveillance Activities at Operations Centers 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-683T.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Eileen Larence 

at (202) 512-8777 or larencee@gao.gov. 
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in today’s hearing to discuss our 

work on assessing the relationship among various operations centers of 

components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the 

agency’s overall National Operations Center in carrying out the important 

mission of maintaining situational awareness. 

When DHS was established as an organization, we recognized the 

challenges it would face in trying to integrate 22 legacy agencies into one 

new corporate entity. Therefore, in January 2003 we placed the integration

and transformation of the department on GAO’s high-risk list—composed 

of those federal agencies, programs, or activities that pose the highest risk 

to the nation—because we recognized the country could not afford to have 

DHS fail. The Department’s transformation remained on our high-risk list 

for 2007 because DHS had still not fully addressed its integration, 

management, and programmatic challenges.1

 Placing it on this list 

obligates us to continue to monitor how well the integration and 

transformation is succeeding. 

With similar concerns, as well as concerns with the response to events 

that have occurred since, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita and 

continuing terrorist threats, the Congress has been overseeing DHS’s 

transformation. As part of this oversight, the Senate Committee on 

Homeland Security and Government Affairs requested that we identify the 

DHS operations centers (established to conduct monitoring and 

surveillance activities that can help detect, deter and prevent terrorist 

acts), to determine if any centers are redundant, and assess the functions

and customers of these centers. Also, as part of this oversight, the 

Committee recognized that Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the 

department’s main operations center—the Homeland Security Operations

Center—was not ready to effectively coordinate the sharing of information 

in a time of crisis and needed repair; therefore, it made a series of 

recommendations to address the problems identified and has been 

monitoring the agency’s efforts to ensure DHS makes these changes.2

 1

GAO, High Risk Series: An Update, GAO-03-119 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2003); High Risk 

Series: An Update, GAO-07-310 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2007). 

2

Report of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Hurricane

Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared, United State Senate. (Washington, D.C.: May 2006). 

Page 1 GAO-07-683T 
In response to the Senate Committee’s request for GAO to review 

operations centers, we decided to assess those centers within DHS’s 

component agencies that, first, conduct operations 24 hours a day, 7 days 

a week, 365 days a year (24/7/365), and that, second, have a broader 

security mission that DHS has determined requires higher levels of 

collaboration from many stakeholders, including DHS component 

agencies, and other federal, state, and local agencies. These centers are 

the Air and Marine Operations Center and the National Targeting Center, 

sponsored by U.S. Customs and Border Protection; the Transportation 

Security Operations Center sponsored by the Transportation Security 

Administration; and the National Operations Center Interagency Watch, 

the successor to the Homeland Security Operations Center, run within the 

Office of Operations Coordination at DHS. We assessed the extent to 

which they implemented key practices that our work has shown helps to 

enhance and sustain collaboration,3

 since such collaboration is important 

to one of the main functions of each center, namely, sharing information 

needed to develop and maintain situational awareness of potential crises 

and terrorist activity nationwide. These key collaborative practices include 

defining and articulating a common outcome and joint strategies to guide 

multi-agency activities such as information sharing, and assessing staffing 

needs to leverage the resources other agencies contribute to the centers. 

We found that these practices can help agencies overcome barriers to 

collaboration, such as overprotection of jurisdiction and resources, as well 

as, incompatible procedures and processes that can result in agencies 

operating in a fragmented and uncoordinated way, wasting resources, and

limiting effectiveness. 

Based on our work on operations centers, we issued a report in October 

2006 with recommendations for the Operations Directorate develop and 

provide guidance to the centers to encourage that they implement these 

key collaborative practices as a means to enhance their ability to meet 

their missions.4

 Today, we would like to, first, briefly review the 

collaboration issues and recommendations we presented in our report, 

then, give an update of DHS’s efforts to respond to these 

recommendations. 

 3

GAO, Results-Oriented Government: Practices That Can Help Enhance and Sustain

Collaboration among Federal Agencies, GAO-06-15 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 2005). 

4

GAO, Homeland Security: Opportunities Exist to Enhance Collaboration at 24/7

Operations Centers Staffed by Multiple DHS Agencies, GAO-07-89 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 

2006). 

Page 2 GAO-07-683T 
In addition, we are aware of the Congress’s concerns about the 

performance of the Homeland Security Operations Center during 

Hurricane Katrina, and the recent efforts made in response to these and 

other concerns identified in hurricane after-action studies and reports. 

Because these efforts to some extent affect DHS’s response to our 

recommendations, we briefly describe some of the steps DHS recently

reported to us that it has taken to address problems Katrina exposed, 

although it is too early to assess these actions to determine how well they 

are being implemented since a number of them are relatively new. 

To determine the extent to which operations centers managed by different

offices and components within DHS had implemented key practices that

our work has shown can enhance collaboration among federal agencies, 

during our original work, we reviewed transition, management integration,

and planning and policy documents from the department. We also 

reviewed strategic plans, as well as annual performance reports and 

planning documents from DHS and its component agencies. In addition, 

we reviewed and analyzed the results of studies undertaken by DHS to 

assess and improve coordination and collaboration at the multi-agency

centers as well as reports from GAO, the Congressional Research Service, 

the DHS Office of Inspector General, and others that addressed the 

integration, coordination, and collaboration of departmentwide program 

functions. To determine the extent to which they reflect how DHS has 

encouraged the use of the key collaborative practices, we also met with 

the acting director and other responsible officials from the Office of 

Operations Coordination to discuss its role and responsibilities. 

Scope and 

Methodology 

To obtain updated information on DHS’s efforts to implement our 

recommendations, we visited the National Operations Center, the National

Infrastructure Coordination Center, the National Response Coordination 

Center, and Transportation Security Operations Center and met with 

center managers. In addition, we spoke to officials at the National 

Targeting Center. We also received a series of briefings on organizational 

and operational changes implemented since Hurricane Katrina and 

reviewed documentation provided to explain these changes. We relied on

these visits and briefings for updated information on DHS’s response to 

our and post-Katrina after action report recommendations; we did not 

verify the accuracy of DHS’s officials’ statements or the effectiveness of 

the implemented actions. We conducted our original and additional audit 

work in accordance with generally accepted government accounting 

standards between October 2005 through September 2006, and March 2007 

through June 2007, respectively. 

Page 3 GAO-07-683T 
In our October 2006 report, we reported that the centers had the 

opportunity to better implement most of the key practices we identified

that enhance collaboration. While we did not identify any major problems 

or barriers to executing their missions, enhanced collaboration could 

further ensure robust situational awareness and support to incident 

response. For example, we found that while DHS had implemented one 

key collaborative practice—leveraging its resources—by having staff from 

multiple agencies work together at the four operations centers, it could 

better implement the following collaborative practices: 

Summary 

• Defining and articulating a common outcome or joint strategies. This 

helps to provide, for example, a compelling rationale for agencies to 

collaborate.

• Assessing each center’s needs in order to leverage resources, especially 

human resources or staffing needs. This helps to ensure efficiencies 

and that the functions of a center are not compromised by the 

workforce limitations of a single agency. 

• Defining roles and responsibilities, especially of the watchstanders5 in 

each center, those staff who come from other agencies and have the 

important job of conducting surveillance activities. This helps to ensure 

that people at the same center in the same role perform their 

responsibilities consistently. Because of the potentially critical, timesensitive need for decisive action at 24/7/365 operations centers, it is 

important that the roles and responsibilities of watchstanders are 

described and understood by both the watch staff as well as the 

officials responsible for managing the operations centers. 

• Establishing compatible standards, policies, and procedures, such as 

those for DHS’s Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN)6

—the 

primary network DHS uses to share incident management and 

homeland security information across DHS, and with other federal, 

state, and local partners. This would provide a means to operate across 

 5

For the purpose of our report, we used the term “watchstander” to refer to an individual 

required to work full-time on a rotating 24-hour schedule, 7 days per week, to maintain 

situational awareness, conduct information assessment and threat monitoring to deter, 

detect, and prevent terrorist incidents. A watchstander may also act as a liaison between 

his agency and other agency representatives at the center, and may manage response to

critical threats and incidents. 

6

The HSIN is an unclassified, Web-based system that provides a secure, collaborative 

environment for real-time information sharing that includes reporting, graphics, and chat

capabilities, as well as a document library that contains reports from multiple federal, 

state, local, and private-sector sources. HSIN supplies suspicious incident and pre-incident 

information, mapping and imagery tools, 24x7 situational awareness, and analysis of 

terrorist threats, tactics, and weapons. 

Page 4 GAO-07-683T 
agency boundaries and help ensure effective communications among 

the centers. 

• Developing mechanisms to monitor and evaluate results of joint 

operations, such as conducting joint exercises and assessing the afteraction reports. This helps management, key decision makers, and both 

stakeholders and customers obtain feedback to improve governing 

policy and operational effectiveness. 

• Reinforcing agency accountability for collaborative efforts by 

recognizing joint efforts and outcomes achieved in published strategic 

and annual performance plans and reports. Joint accountability and 

recognition can provide an incentive to collaborate. 

We found that the Operations Directorate, established in November 2005 

to improve operational efficiency and coordination, provides DHS with an 

opportunity to more fully implement these key practices. Therefore, we 

recommended that the Secretary of DHS charge the Director of the 

Operations Directorate with developing and providing the guidance 

necessary to help ensure the four centers take the following six actions to 

implement best practices for collaboration and help better position the 

centers to achieve their common missions: 

• Define common outcomes and joint strategies for achieving their 

overall mission; 

• Conduct staffing needs assessments to better leverage resources within 

centers; 

• Clarify the roles and responsibilities for watchstanders so that they 

understand each person’s expected duties and contributions, especially 

during an emergency; 

• Apply standards, policies, and procedures to promote the more 

extensive use of DHS’s information network to improve 

communications; 

• Prepare mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the results of joint and 

collaborative efforts to ensure effectiveness; and

• Address the results achieved by collaborative efforts in strategic and

annual performance plans and reports to increase accountability. 

At the time of our report, DHS agreed with these recommendations, but 

according to DHS officials, has yet to implement them. In recent meetings, 

DHS said that they believe some changes at the National Operations 

Center are responsive to several of these recommendations. For example, 

the center is taking steps to better define the role of watchstanders, and 

DHS has designed a strategy and set of initiatives to improve the 

usefulness of the information network. However, according to Operations 

Directorate officials, they have not been directed by DHS to issue the 

Page 5 GAO-07-683T 
overall guidance we recommended. They also do not plan to issue such 

guidance at this time because they stated they do not have any 

administrative, budgetary, or operational authority or control over the 

other three component centers. While we understand that these centers 

have missions unique to their sponsoring agencies and are not subject to

the Operations Directorate, providing these centers guidance that is not 

mandatory but strongly endorsed on ways to better collaborate internally 

would enhance their effectiveness within their own centers as well as in 

providing the national center the information it needs, especially during a

time of crisis. 

DHS officials said another reason they had yet to implement our 

recommendations is in part because, instead of focusing on these intradepartment collaboration issues, DHS has been giving priority to fixing 

critical inter-agency and inter-governmental issues that hindered its ability 

to respond to major, national incidents and disasters, particularly 

Hurricane Katrina. DHS officials said there were a number of post-Katrina 

initiatives underway which could build relationships among the centers so 

that they are more disposed to implement the recommended key 

collaborative practices in the future. For example, DHS points to its efforts 

to: 

• Establish standard roles and procedures among all stakeholders, both 

within and outside DHS, for reporting information during a major 

incident. Now, according to DHS, information must be verified and 

clarified at the field and headquarters level before it is placed on its 

information network. 

• Create the Common Operating Picture—a real-time, web-based tool 

designed to provide a common view of critical information during a 

crisis—within DHS’s Homeland Security Information Network. 

• Create working groups of partners within and outside of DHS to 

enhance information flow on planning, training, and incident

management, to resolve interdepartmental conflicts, and to facilitate 

decision-making at higher levels. 

While it is too early to assess to what extent DHS has successfully 

implemented and institutionalized these initiatives since some are only 

recently established, they appear to be designed to address several key 

recommendations from congressional and administration Post-Katrina 

Page 6 GAO-07-683T 
assessments.

7

 DHS acknowledges it still has a substantial way to go to fully 

implement these initiatives and measure their results, but it has recently 

tested some of these initiatives during interagency training exercises and 

has plans to do more of these tests in the future. Continuing to focus on 

efforts to measure how well these initiatives are working, and, as 

importantly, to what extent key stakeholders, such as state and local 

governments and the private sector, anticipate that these initiatives will 

meet their needs is critical, given that Hurricane Katrina demonstrated 

these stakeholders are the first responders and key to effective disaster 

response and recovery. Finally, it is clear that Congressional oversight has 

been and will continue to be a key driver in accelerating DHS’s efforts to 

be better prepared to respond to and manage national incidents. 

In our October 2006 report on DHS multi-agency operations centers, we 

found that they were not unnecessarily redundant in that they have 

distinct missions but also contribute to the larger effort, carried out by the 

National Operations Center, to provide national situational awareness and 

incident management across DHS. In terms of key collaborative practices,

DHS had implemented one practice—leveraging its resources—by having

staff from multiple agencies work together at the four operations centers, 

but could take advantage of other relevant practices we have found to be 

important to enhancing and sustaining collaboration among federal 

agencies. We also reported that the establishment of the Operations 

Directorate provided DHS with an opportunity to more consistently 

implement these practices. As of June 2007, DHS had taken some actions 

but had not yet implemented our recommendations for several reasons, 

including the stated concern that the Operations Directorate does not have 

authority over component centers. Nevertheless, we continue to see merit 

in the wider use of the key collaborative practices we identified and a role

for the Directorate to encourage their use across centers. 

DHS’s Four MultiAgency Operations 

Centers Have Unique 

Missions and 

Responsibilities, but 

Also Have 

Opportunities to 

Enhance 

Collaboration 

 7

Executive Office of the President, The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons

Learned. February 2006. 

Page 7 GAO-07-683T 
At the time of our review, the three DHS components responsible for the 

four multi-agency centers had not developed or documented common 

goals or joint strategies that incorporated all the agencies within the 

centers and that our work has shown could, in turn, enhance collaboration

among these agencies. Officials at the multi-agency operations centers we 

visited said they did consider formally documenting working agreements 

but concluded it was not essential since all of the agencies involved were

part of DHS. While this may be true, documenting common outcomes can

provide a compelling rationale for agencies to collaborate and 

documenting joint strategies ensures everyone is working in concert 

toward the end results that collectively need to be achieved. Our work 

shows that agencies strengthen their commitment to collaborate when 

they articulate agreements in formal documents such as memorandums of 

understanding, interagency guidance, or interagency planning documents. 

The Centers Do Not Define 

and Articulate Common 

Outcomes and Joint 

Strategies, a Key Practice 

Intended to Enhance and 

Sustain Collaboration 

Last year, officials from the National Operations Center said that the lack 

of formal agreements is a reflection of the speed with which the center 

was established and the inherent flexibility offered to DHS agencies in 

order to get them to staff the operation center positions. While recognizing 

the benefits of such flexibility, it is important to balance the trade-off of 

ensuring that all participants understand the common goals and objectives 

to be achieved. In addition, within DHS, external and internal

memorandums of agreement and other interagency joint operating plans 

are often used to document common organizational goals and how 

agencies will work together. For example, the Office of Investigations at 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border 

Protection’s border patrol have a memorandum of understanding that 

governs the interaction between the two components as they carry out 

their missions to investigate and reduce vulnerabilities in the customs and 

immigration systems and to protect our borders, respectively, and 

formalizes roles and responsibilities in order to enhance information 

sharing. In addition, the DHS Office of Inspector General has reported that 

memorandums of understanding are valuable tools for establishing 

protocols for managing a national-level program between two 

organizations.

8

 For these reasons, we recommended that the Operations 

Directorate develop and provide guidance to the three agencies that 

sponsor the operations centers to help ensure they define common goals 

 8

Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Office of Inspections and 

Special Reviews, An Assessment of the Proposal to Merge Customs and Border Protection

with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, OIG-06-04 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 2005). 

Page 8 GAO-07-683T 
and joint strategies that incorporate all the agencies working at the 

centers. 

In our recent follow-up to our recommendations, DHS officials said that 

they had not issued such guidance, but pointed to several other postKatrina actions DHS was taking that it believes are examples of common 

strategies and plans that are put into action daily and that enhance 

collaboration, and thus, situational awareness. For example, DHS said it 

has developed national reporting requirements and a coordinated national

reporting chain for submitting homeland security information during a 

crisis, in part in response to Hurricane Katrina lessons learned. The 

national reporting requirements and reporting chain is to define 

procedures that component centers, among others, are to follow for 

inputting and confirming information used during a crisis. 

In addition, our past work has demonstrated that agencies should involve 

nonfederal partners, key clients, and stakeholders in defining and 

articulating outcomes and decision-making. Along those lines, DHS has 

created or plans to create several working groups with state, local, and 

private sector members to enhance information flow for incident 

management, and facilitate decision-making at higher levels. For example, 

the Director of the Office of Operations said DHS plans to establish a HSIN 

Advisory Council to provide a forum for providing feedback on ways to 

improve information sharing among communities of interest. 

The Centers Are at Varying 

Stages of Assessing 

Staffing Needs; Doing So 

Could Help to Ensure 

Centers Have Enough Staff 

to Leverage Resources to 

Increase Efficiency 

The extent to which officials responsible for managing the four multiagency operations centers had conducted needs assessments to determine 

the staffing requirements of each center as a means to leverage resources 

varied at the time of our review. For example, CBP officials conducted an

evaluation in June 2005 that addressed the Air and Marine Operations 

Center’s capabilities and continuing staffing needs related to its personnel, 

but it did not clearly address the need for, or responsibilities of, U.S. Coast 

Guard staff assigned to the center. Transportation Security Operations 

Center and National Operations Center officials said they had not 

documented a needs analysis for staff from other agencies. They said they

viewed cross-agency staffing as a historical edict based on a general 

assumption that such expertise was needed to fulfill the mission of their 

operations center, and believed that the supporting agency providing the 

staff best knew the staffing requirements to fulfill its role at the centers. 

Our work has shown that identifying and leveraging resources, including 

human resources, ensures efficiencies and that the functions of a multiPage 9 GAO-07-683T 
agency operations center are not compromised by the workforce 

limitations of a single agency. 

Since our report, DHS said it is updating mission requirements for the 

Operations Directorate and will subsequently assess the National 

Operations Center’s staffing needs, although DHS did not say when that 

assessment would be completed. On the other hand, Officials at the 

National Targeting Center and the Transportation Security Operations 

Center told us they have not assessed cross-component staffing needs 

because they considered such assessments to be the responsibility of the 

agency providing staff. Nevertheless, we maintain that such assessments 

continue to be useful to ensure efficiency and that operations centers have

the correct mix of staff to perform their missions. Therefore, while we 

understand that the Operations Directorate has taken the position it does 

not have control over the component center resources, we maintain that

providing guidance to component agencies to assist them in conducting 

such staffing needs assessments would allow the component sponsoring 

the center to leverage resources more efficiently to meet the operational 

needs of the center. 

Not All Centers Have 

Established a Definition of 

Watchstander Roles and 

Responsibilities for All 

Agencies at Each Center; 

Doing So Would Help 

Ensure Staff Understand 

Each Others’ Duties during 

Emergencies 

Our work has shown that collaborating agencies should work together to 

define and agree on who will do what and how they will organize their 

joint and individual efforts, and that this facilitates decision-making. 

Agencies use handbooks, charters, standard operating procedures, and 

other methods to document these agreements. We found, however, that 

while three of the four multi-agency operations centers had developed 

descriptions for the watchstander position staffed by their own agency at

the time of our review, only one center—the Air and Marine Operations 

Center—had developed a position description for staff assigned to the 

center from another DHS agency. For example, at this center, officials 

require that Coast Guard staff meet a standardized set of requirements for 

radar watchstanders. The other centers relied on the components that 

provide staff to define their watchstanders’ roles and responsibilities. 

While we recognize components may be in the best position to define how 

their staff should contribute, we maintain that it is important that each 

watchstander’s position within a center be clearly defined and 

communicated so that staff understand not only their individual role, but 

each other’s responsibilities and span of control, as well as their expected

joint contributions, most critically during major events. In addition, 

because of the potentially time-sensitive need for decisive action at 

24/7/365 operations centers, it is important that the roles and

responsibilities of watchstanders are described and understood by both 

Page 10 GAO-07-683T 
the staff and the officials responsible for managing the operations centers 

to enhance and sustain collaboration. Further, a definition of the 

watchstander role and responsibilities is important for supporting agency 

officials who must make staffing decisions about assigning qualified and 

knowledgeable personnel to the centers. 

According to DHS, since our report, it has taken steps to further define the 

role and responsibilities of the watchstanders in its National Operations 

Center and documented them in its Standard Operating Procedures, as 

well as to develop Memoranda of Agreements with the components that 

will codify the role of the watchstanders they provide to the National 

Operations Center. Such an action, like that of the Air and Marine 

Operations Center with regard to Coast Guard watchstanders, helps 

ensure that the staff received from partnering organizations possess the 

necessary skills to support the operations center to which they are 

assigned. Given that DHS has recognized the importance of this key 

practice within these two instances, we continue to maintain it is 

important for DHS to ensure the other centers likewise have clearly 

defined and communicated the roles and responsibilities of 

watchstanders. 

DHS Has Taken Some 

Steps to Provide Centers 

with Standards, Policies, 

and Procedures, Especially 

for Information Sharing, to 

Operate across Agency 

Boundaries, but 

Challenges Remain 

Since January 2005, we have designated information sharing for homeland 

security a high-risk area because the federal government still faces 

formidable challenges in analyzing and disseminating key information 

among federal and other partners in a timely, accurate, and useful 

manner.9

 Likewise, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the inability to 

share information during a disaster can impair the speed of response and 

recovery efforts. Each operations center shares information so as to 

understand threats, maintain situational awareness, and facilitate the 

management of responses to incidents. One of the key technical tools DHS 

has decided to use to provide for this information-sharing is the HSIN, and 

organizations participating in multi-agency operations centers need to be

connected to the network and have the training and guidance that enables 

its use, among other things. DHS implemented HSIN in 2004 and reports

that 18,000 individuals across DHS, other federal agencies, as well as state 

and local government and private entities are authorized to use it. 

However, we, the DHS IG, and the department itself have identified 

continuing concerns with this system, which is used for sharing a variety

 9

GAO. High-Risk Series: An Update, GAO-07-310 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2007). 

Page 11 GAO-07-683T 
of information, including law enforcement and emergency response 

information used to support situational awareness and incident response 

In April 2007, we reported10 that DHS did not fully adhere to collaborative 

practices or Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance in 

coordinating its efforts to implement HSIN through state and local 

information-sharing initiatives. OMB guidance requires DHS to foster such 

coordination and collaboration as a means to improve government 

performance, including enhancing information sharing and avoiding 

duplication of effort. Key practices to help implement the guidance include 

establishing joint strategies and developing compatible policies and 

procedures to operate across agency boundaries. However, DHS did not 

fully adhere to these practices or guidance in coordinating its efforts on 

HSIN with key state and local stakeholders. As a result, the department 

faces the risk that, among other things, effective information sharing is not 

occurring and that its HSIN system may duplicate state and local 

capabilities. The department has efforts planned and underway to improve 

coordination and collaboration, but these efforts have just begun or are 

being planned with implementation milestones yet to be established. As a 

result, we made recommendations to the Secretary of Homeland Security 

to ensure that HSIN is effectively coordinated with state and local 

government information-sharing initiatives. The Inspector General’s June 

2006 report had similar findings that DHS did not provide adequate 

guidance, including clear information sharing processes, training, and

reference materials, needed to effectively implement HSIN11 so that 

stakeholders were sure of how to use the system. 

The HSIN program manager pointed to a number of initiatives being 

implemented to address these challenges. These actions include the 

issuance of a strategic framework and implementation plan, creation of a 

Mission Coordinating Committee to define component information 

requirements for the network, and, as mentioned previously, the planned 

establishment of a HSIN advisory committee comprised of experts, users, 

and other stakeholders involved in homeland security operations around 

 10GAO, Information Technology: Numerous Federal Networks Used to Support Homeland

Security Need to Be Better Coordinated with Key State and Local Information-Sharing 

Initiatives, GAO-07-455 (Washington, D.C.: April 2007). 

11Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Office of Information 

Technology, HSIN Could Support Information Sharing More Effectively, DHS/OIG-06-38

(Washington, D.C.: June 2006).

Page 12 GAO-07-683T 
the country. This committee is intended to provide DHS with comments 

and feedback on how the HSIN program can better meet user needs, 

examine DHS’s processes for deploying HSIN to the states, assess state 

resources, and determine how HSIN can coordinate with these resources. 

Nevertheless, the program manager also identified challenges in getting 

components to participate in the process of identifying user needs, and 

said that the department still faced challenges in gaining widespread 

acceptance and use of this tool. Furthermore, one component that 

sponsors a key portion of HSIN, the Preparedness Directorate, is 

considering whether to continue to support and maintain portals to 

provide connectivity to private sector owners and operators of critical 

infrastructure sites, or whether to pursue other alternatives, raising 

questions about the overall utility of HSIN. Finally, the DHS Office of 

Inspector General plans to conduct an evaluation of the HSIN beginning

later this year as a follow-up to its 2006 report to determine the progress 

the Department has made in fixing the shortcomings identified.12

Three of Four Centers Had 

Not Developed Methods to 

Monitor and Evaluate the 

Results of Joint Efforts 

With the exception of the Air and Marine Operations Center, the multiagency centers had not developed methods to monitor and evaluate the 

results of joint efforts at the time of our review, a key practice for ensuring 

collaboration. For example, the Office of Management and Budget’s 

assessment of the National Operations Center for 2005 determined that 

center officials had not established effective annual or long-term 

performance goals, a first step in an effective performance management 

and measurement process. Nor were performance measures or other 

mechanisms in place to monitor and evaluate the joint efforts of multiple 

DHS agencies at the Transportation Security Operations Center and the 

National Targeting Center. Without annual goals and a means to measure 

performance, it is difficult for an organization to determine how well it is 

functioning and identify how it could be more effective. Likewise, our 

work has shown that developing performance measures and mechanisms 

can help management, key decision makers, and both stakeholders and 

customers obtain feedback to improve operational effectiveness and 

policy. 

 12Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, Office of Information 

Technology, Homeland Security Information Network Could Support Information 

Sharing More Effectively, OIG-06-38, June 2006. 

Page 13 GAO-07-683T 
To date, DHS has not provided guidance to the multiagency centers to help 

implement mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the results of 

collaborative efforts. However, as we further discuss later in this 

statement, the Operations Directorate said the National Operations Center, 

and, as relevant, other centers, have participated in, and will be 

participating in, exercises to test some of the changes the centers have 

implemented. These exercises provide a means to monitor and evaluate 

collaboration during real or hypothetical events, and the after-action 

reviews or lessons learned reviews conducted such as Katrina after-action 

reports and recommendations, as well as its own exercises and lessons 

learned, such as the exercises to test and revise HSIN and the Common 

Operating Picture (COP). The center director also described several new 

inter-agency groups designed to improve operations that also offer a 

means to monitor and evaluate results as well. 

The Centers Are at Various 

Stages of Using Joint 

Agency Planning and 

Reporting to Reinforce 

Accountability for 

Collaborative Efforts 

In our prior work, we determined that neither DHS nor the component 

agencies responsible for managing multi-agency operations centers 

consistently discussed, or included a description of, the contribution of 

the centers’ collaborative efforts in the components’ strategic or annual 

performance plans and reports. Our work has shown that federal agencies 

can use these plans and reports as tools to drive collaboration with other 

agencies and partners, as well as to establish complementary, consistent, 

and reinforcing goals and strategies for achieving results. Published 

strategic and annual performance plans and reports make agencies 

answerable for collaboration, and help to ensure that Congress has the 

information necessary to monitor, oversee, and effectively make 

investment decisions. 

In terms of using strategic and performance plans to reinforce

collaboration, the most recent DHS strategic plan, issued in 2004, neither 

included a discussion of performance goals for, nor addressed the joint 

operations of, the multi-agency centers. On the other hand, the Air and 

Marine Operations Center’s strategic plan for 2005 generally discussed the 

importance of strengthening collaboration with other component agencies 

and included a goal to strengthen component agency partnerships to 

maximize homeland security strategies. 

In terms of using published reports to increase accountability for 

collaboration, CBP’s 2005 annual report on the operations of the National

Targeting Center did include a section dedicated to the contributions of 

personnel from other DHS components. But, reports from the other 

components that manage the centers did not address the roles and 

Page 14 GAO-07-683T 
contributions of supporting agencies in accomplishing the centers’ 

missions. Thus agencies are missing an opportunity to reinforce the value 

of partner agency contributions and investments. Likewise, reports from 

the DHS agencies that provide staff to these centers also did not address 

their participation in their own performance reports. 

According to DHS officials, the Operations Directorate and the National 

Operations Center have been focused on responding to the congressional 

and administration reports and corresponding recommendations 

generated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These reports pointed to

a number of failures and problems attributed to the predecessor to the 

National Operations Center—the Homeland Security Operations Center—

including unclear roles and responsibilities; problems with the flow of 

information in and out of the center, especially to senior leadership; a lack 

of planning; problems confirming and validating information, and 

clarifying conflicting information; and untimely reporting. The reports 

concluded that as a result, senior leaders in the Department and the 

Administration were not aware of problems with the levees and flooding 

as early as they should have been. To address these problems, the after 

action reports made a series of recommendations, including the: 

DHS’s Operations 

Directorate Has Given 

Priority to Fixing the 

Problems that 

Hurricane Katrina 

Exposed 

• Creation of a national operations center to provide national situational 

awareness, facilitate incident management, and a common operating 

picture; 

• Establishment of a permanent planning element for incident 

management and a national planning and execution system; and 

• Creation of a national reporting system as well as national information 

requirements and a reporting chain. 

In response to these concerns, among others, DHS reported that it made a 

series of changes to its operations, organization, and procedures for 

sharing information in order to maintain situational awareness and 

provide for incident management. The changes included giving priority to 

improving coordination with external stakeholders, such as other federal 

agencies, state and local entities who are the first responders and 

ultimately manage recovery efforts, and its own components and their 

respective operations centers. The DHS National Operations Center staff 

with whom we spoke maintained that implementing these changes could

in turn create an environment where the components and centers may be 

more disposed to implementing the key practices for improving 

collaboration that our work has identified. 

Page 15 GAO-07-683T 
To address problems with collecting, analyzing, and timely disseminating 

of critical information during an incident that Katrina exposed, DHS 

officials said the Operations Directorate and the National Operations 

Center established several initiatives within the last year or so. Among 

other things, these initiatives included a new notification system aimed at 

providing protocols for sharing information on a graduated scale (from 

steady state to awareness, concern, and finally urgency). The Operations 

Directorate and the National Operations Center also defined a reporting 

structure, ranging from more real-time, unvetted information available 

from and to a wide range of stakeholders to reports intended to be more 

complete, vetted and validated through designated lead agencies and 

higher-level summaries geared for more senior leadership. DHS has 

initially developed these protocols and processes for sharing information 

for hurricane response and recovery and is expanding them to other 

scenarios and concerns.

One other major DHS initiative to better share information for situational 

awareness and decision support that responds to key post-Katrina 

recommendations also depends on HSIN. DHS has created the Common 

Operating Picture within HSIN as a web-based tool designed to be 

available to all HSIN users, including key federal, state, and joint field 

office homeland security partners, to provide the information needed to

make critical decisions during crises. Initially, DHS created COP templates 

to address hurricane disasters in time for the 2006 hurricane season. The 

tool includes, among other things, current summaries of specific 

situations, the location and operational status of critical infrastructure, 

media reports, and streaming video from the field that provides a real-time 

picture of developments, especially at an incident site, to enhance 

situational awareness. DHS also has created COP Training Teams that 

provide training and technical support to DHS components, and other 

partners. DHS said training was provided to 17 states on the Gulf and East 

coasts in 2006, the most hurricane-prone areas of the country. However, 

DHS is still resolving operational issues with COP. For example, DHS 

reported in January 2007 that a comprehensive backup capability for the 

COP was under development but that the Department was prepared for 

contingencies related to power, telecommunications and server outages. 

DHS also reported that it continues to develop information requirements 

for use in other scenarios, such as pandemics and incidents involving 

nuclear devices, among others, as well as to further refine the system. 

DHS officials said they have created several new working groups and 

organizational entities within the Operations Directorate or National 

Operations Center aimed at improving capabilities. The new units include: 

Page 16 GAO-07-683T 
• Senior Leadership Group. It is comprised of key DHS officials across 

the major components and intended to provide a forum for the 

Secretary to obtain critical advice from those with the most direct 

incident management responsibilities, to communicate decisions, to 

facilitate the integration and coordination of intradepartmental 

operational missions, activities, and programs at the headquarters 

level; and to assist in resolving intradepartmental issues. The group 

convenes as necessary, such as during an actual incident or major 

exercise, although the Secretary or the Director of Operations 

Coordination may convene the group at any time. 

• Incident Management Planning Team—consisting of 53 members 

drawn from 22 DHS components, 25 partner departments or agencies, 

and the American Red Cross—that has begun the coordination of 

existing plans and the use of resources for domestic disasters. 

According to DHS officials, the team is developing plans for the most 

likely, and then the most dangerous, of the National Planning

Scenarios—the 15 all-hazards planning scenarios for use in national, 

federal, state, and local homeland security preparedness activities that 

are representative of the range of potential terrorist attacks and natural 

disasters and the related impacts that face our nation. 

• Disaster Situational Awareness Teams. These teams are to be 

comprised of field staff from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement 

since they can be more easily deployed and are to be at a site within 24 

hours to provide situational awareness reporting and other assistance. 

• Crisis Action Teams. These multi-agency teams, whose membership 

overlaps in part with the new planning teams, are to provide 

interagency incident management capabilities and to, among other 

things, recommend courses of action, help prioritize incidents and 

resources, and serve as a central point for information collection, 

evaluation, and coordination, especially for complex or multiple 

incidents. 

Finally, DHS has completed a study of its operational capabilities and gaps 

to guide its future mission and initiatives. Called the Operations Mission 

Blueprint, DHS operations staff said the results are still under review; 

therefore, that they could not provide us with a copy. Part of this study 

includes a plan to consolidate DHS operations centers in headquarters and 

its components in a facility located at the St. Elizabeth’s West Campus in 

Washington, D.C.13 The plan cites a number of organizational benefits to 

 13Department of Homeland Security, National Capital Region Housing Master Plan: 

Building a Unified Department, Washington D.C., October 2006. 

Page 17 GAO-07-683T 
collocating facilities, including enhancing collaboration by bringing 

together a large number of DHS executives and line employees currently 

dispersed across the region. 

While DHS provided us with background briefings, some supporting 

documentation, and some after action reports on the initiatives we have 

outlined, we did not evaluate the extent to which they have been 

implemented and are effective at addressing the problems Katrina 

identified, in part because they are so new and in some cases still 

concepts. DHS officials themselves, however, identified some challenges

and next steps in implementation. These include, for example, continuing

to outreach to and better integrate DHS components as well as other 

stakeholders in planning and implementation, such as state, local, and 

private sector partners. 

As to this latter challenge, DHS has tested several of its new initiatives, 

such as the COP, through daily use, as well as interagency exercises. For 

example, through an exercise conducted last year, the National Operations

Center identified opportunities to improve implementation of the COP. 

DHS recently completed two other exercises and plans additional 

exercises this fall and over the next two years that can also provide helpful 

performance information. We agree that the use of exercises, and more 

importantly the after-action and lessons learned analyses and 

recommendations to fix identified problems, are good methods to help 

determine how well initiatives are working, especially when testing under

live, real-time circumstances is not possible. 

Complementing this with more systematic performance measures and 

ways to obtain feedback from key users and stakeholders on how well the 

initiatives meet their needs would also be helpful. For example, officials 

noted that there are systematic methods for evaluating what has been 

achieved. The objectives of the HSIN implementation include providing 

measurable performance metrics as well as obtaining stakeholder 

feedback through its new Advisory Committee, when constituted. 

Implementation of the system is to be based on both agency and industry 

best practices. Following through on implementation of these types of 

measures and feedback loops is particularly important for state and local 

stakeholders, as Katrina demonstrated, since they are the first responders 

and key to effective incident response planning and implementation. 

Page 18 GAO-07-683T 
Our prior work demonstrated that the three component multi-agency 

operations centers we reviewed have a critical mission to meet for their 

own agencies, as well as a common mission to support the National 

Operations Center, the key hub for sharing information on nationwide 

situational awareness and for coordinating federal support during major 

disasters. Centers rely on staff from multiple agencies to achieve their 

missions, so it is important that the centers can collaborate effectively 

among the agencies within a center. Our work provides a blueprint of key

practices the centers could use to achieve this collaboration, and also 

demonstrates that they have opportunities to implement these practices 

more extensively. The payoff can include assurance that all staff clearly

understands roles and responsibilities, especially during a crisis, and that 

centers have a common goal for achieving their joint missions, the right 

staff from across agencies to do so, and ways to evaluate results achieved 

and implement needed corrective actions. In turn, this can better position 

DHS, and the nation, to prevent, mitigate and respond to a critical event, 

help the Congress to fulfill its oversight and homeland security

responsibilities, and help the department better integrate into a cohesive 

unit. While we understand that the Directorate does not control 

component centers and is reluctant to issue guidance to them on ways to 

implement these best practices as we recommended, we continue to think 

that the Directorate can reinforce these practices through such guidance 

and example, not only as it works with external stakeholders, but also 

with its internal component centers. We believe the Directorate could be

more proactive to accelerate implementation so that centers achieve

anticipated benefits sooner given current priorities and available 

resources. 

Concluding 

Observations 

We also understand that the department set its priorities to first focus on 

fixing the problems Katrina exposed, as the Congress and Administration

tasked, and recognize that such focus has, and will continue to be, a key 

driver in effecting change to improve situational awareness and incident 

management capabilities at DHS. We also believe that the initiatives DHS 

is implementing in response appear to be the proper steps moving 

forward, given that they focus on better planning for disaster response and 

better information sharing, as well as include the necessary key players. 

However, while these initiatives are aimed at putting the right players, 

processes, protocols, and practices in place, both we and the department

recognize that implementation is early, measures of effectiveness must 

still be put in place, and challenges must be overcome. 

Page 19 GAO-07-683T 
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, this completes my 

prepared statement. I would be happy to respond to any questions that you 

or any members of the subcommittee may have at this time. 

For information about this testimony, please contact Eileen Larence,

Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, at (202) 512-8777, or 

larencee@gao.gov. Other individuals making key contributions to this 

testimony include Christopher Keisling, Nancy Briggs, Katherine Davis and 

Tony DeFrank. 

(440606) Page 20 GAO-07-683T 
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