In response to global challenges the government faces in the coming years, the creation of a Department of Homeland Security provides a unique opportunity to create an extremely effective and performance-based organization that can strengthen the nation’s ability to protect its borders and citizens against terrorism. There is likely to be considerable benefit over time from restructuring some of the homeland security functions, including reducing risk and improving the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of these consolidated agencies and programs. Realistically, however, in the short term, the magnitude of the challenges that the new department faces will clearly require substantial time and effort, and will take additional resources to make it fully effective. Recently, we testified that Congress should consider several very specific criteria in its evaluation of whether individual agencies or programs should be included or excluded from the proposed department. Those criteria include the following: Mission Relevancy: Is homeland security a major part of the agency or program mission? Is it the primary mission of the agency or program? Similar Goals and Objectives: Does the agency or program being considered for the new department share primary goals and objectives with the other agencies or programs being consolidated? Leverage Effectiveness: Does the agency or program being considered for the new department create synergy and help to leverage the effectiveness of other agencies and programs or the new department as a whole? In other words, is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? Gains Through Consolidation: Does the agency or program being considered for the new department improve the efficiency and effectiveness of homeland security missions through eliminating duplications and overlaps, closing gaps and aligning or merging common roles and responsibilities? Integrated Information Sharing/Coordination: Does the agency or program being considered for the new department contribute to or leverage the ability of the new department to enhance the sharing of critical information or otherwise improve the coordination of missions and activities related to homeland security? Compatible Cultures: Can the organizational culture of the agency or program being considered for the new department effectively meld with the other entities that will be consolidated? Field structures and approaches to achieving missions vary considerably between agencies. Impact on Excluded Agencies: What is the impact on departments losing components to the new department? What is the impact on agencies with homeland security missions left out of the new department? Federally sponsored research and development efforts, a key focus of the proposed legislation, enhance the government’s capability to counter chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear terrorist threats by providing technologies that meet a range of crisis- and consequence- management needs. Research and development efforts for these technologies, however, can be risky, time consuming, and costly. Such efforts also may need to address requirements not available in off-the-shelf products. These factors limit private and public research and development efforts for these technologies, necessitating federal government involvement and collaboration. Many federal agencies and interagency working groups have recently deployed or are conducting research on a variety of technologies to combat terrorism. Recently deployed technologies include a prototype biological detection system used at the Salt Lake City Olympics and a prototype chemical detection system currently being used in Washington D.C.’s metro system that was developed by DOE. Technologies under development include new or improved vaccines, antibiotics, and antivirals being developed by the National Institutes of Health. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in collaboration with other federal agencies, are conducting research on the diagnosis and treatment of smallpox. Moreover, the Food and Drug Administration is investigating a variety of biological agents that could be used as terrorist weapons. Other federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and intelligence community are engaged in similar research and development activities, such as research on technology to protect combatants from chemical and biological agents. Certain roles and responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security in managing research and development need to be clarified. Under the proposed legislation, the Department of Homeland Security would be tasked with developing national policy for and coordinating the federal government’s civilian research and development efforts to counter chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. However, while coordination is important, it will not be enough. Federal agency coordination alone may not address the specific needs of state and local governments, such as those of local police and fire departments that will use this technology. In our view, the proposed legislation should also specify that a role of the new department will be to develop collaborative relationships with programs at all levels of government—federal, state, and local—to ensure that users’ needs and research efforts are linked. We also believe the legislation should be clarified to ensure that the new department would be responsible for the development of a single national research and development strategic plan. Such a plan would help to ensure that research gaps are filled, unproductive duplication is minimized, and individual agency plans are consistent with the overall goals. Moreover, the proposed legislation, as written, is unclear about the new department’s role in developing standards for the performance and interoperability of new technologies to address terrorist threats. We believe the development of these standards must be a priority of the new department. The limitations of existing coordination and the critical need for a more collaborative, unified research structure has been amply demonstrated in the recent past. We have previously reported that while agencies attempt to coordinate federal research and development programs in a variety of ways, breakdowns occur, leading to research gaps and duplication of effort. Coordination is limited by compartmentalization of efforts because of the sensitivity of the research and development programs, security classification of research, and the absence of a single coordinating entity to ensure against duplication. For example, the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was unaware of U.S. Coast Guard’s plans to develop methods to detect biological agents on infected cruise ships and, therefore, was unable to share information on its potentially related research to develop biological detection devices for buildings. Although the proposed legislation states that the new department will be responsible for developing national policy and coordinating research and development, it has a number of limitations that could weaken its effectiveness. First, the legislation tasks the new department with coordinating the federal government’s “civilian efforts” only. We believe the new department will also need to coordinate with the Department of Defense and the intelligence agencies that conduct research and development efforts designed to detect and respond to weapons of mass destruction. The proposed transfer of some DOE research and development efforts to the Department of Homeland Security also does not eliminate potential overlaps, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration. Coordination will still be required within and among the 23 DOE national laboratories. For example, our 2001 report noted that two offices within Sandia National Laboratory concurrently and separately worked on similar thermal imagery projects for two different federal agencies, rather than consolidating the requests and combining resources. In addition, local police and fire departments and state and local governments possess practical knowledge about their technological needs and relevant design limitations that should be taken into account in federal efforts to provide new equipment, such as protective gear and sensor systems. To be most effective, the new department will have to develop collaborative relationships with all these organizations to facilitate technological improvements and encourage cooperative behavior. The existing proposal leaves a number of problems unaddressed as well. For example, while the proposed legislation is clear that the position of Undersecretary for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Countermeasures will be responsible for developing national policy for federal research and development, there is no requirement for a strategic plan for national research and development that could address coordination, reduce potential duplication, and ensure that important issues are addressed. In 2001, we recommended the creation of a unified strategy to reduce duplication and leverage resources, and suggested that the plan be coordinated with federal agencies performing research as well as with state and local authorities. The development of such a plan would help to ensure that research gaps are filled, unproductive duplication is minimized, individual agency plans are consistent with the overall goals, and a basis for assessing the success of the research and development efforts. Also, while the legislation calls for the establishment of guidelines for state and local governments to implement countermeasures for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear terrorism threats, it is not clear to us what these guidelines are to entail. In this regard, we believe it will be important to develop standards for the performance and interoperability of new technologies, something that the legislation does not specifically address. For example, we had discussions with officials from the Utah State Department of Health who prepared for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. These officials said that local police and fire departments had been approached by numerous vendors offering a variety of chemical and biological detection technology for use during the Olympics. However, these state and local officials were unsure of the best technology to purchase and could find no federal agency that would provide guidance on the technologies. They told us that if the science backing up the technology is poor or the data the technology produces are faulty, the technology can do more harm than good. Further, the legislation would allow the new department to direct, fund, and conduct research related to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and other emerging threats on its own. This raises the potential for duplication of efforts, lack of efficiency, and an increased need for coordination with other departments that would continue to carry out relevant research. We are concerned that the proposal could result in a duplication of capacity that already exists in the current federal laboratories. Under Title III of the proposed legislation, a number of DOE programs and activities would be transferred to the new department. Some of these transfers seem appropriate. However, in other cases we are concerned about the transfers because of the potential impact on programs and activities that currently support missions beyond homeland security. Finally, in some cases, transfers proposed by the legislation are not laid out in enough detail to permit an assessment. We discuss each of these groups of transfers below. Title III proposes to transfer to the Department of Homeland Security certain DOE activities that seem appropriate. Specifically, Title III proposes to transfer the nuclear threat assessment program and activities of the assessment, detection, and cooperation program in DOE’s international Materials, Protection, and Accountability Program (MPC&A).