FPS was established in 1971 as the uniformed protection force of GSA government-occupied facilities. The mission of FPS is to render federal properties safe and secure for federal employees, officials, and visitors in a professional and cost-effective manner by deploying a highly trained and multi-disciplined police force. FPS was originally located within GSA’s Public Buildings Service (PBS). As part of PBS, FPS was responsible for providing law enforcement and security services to GSA’s tenants and the public at federal buildings nationwide. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established DHS to prevent and mitigate the damage from terrorist attacks within the United States, which includes terrorism directed at federal facilities. Under the act, FPS was transferred from the GSA to DHS. DHS later placed it within ICE. The President’s fiscal year 2010 budget requested the transfer of FPS from ICE to NPPD. Language in the budget request stated that FPS responsibilities, such as providing physical security and policing of federal buildings, establishing building security policy, and ensuring compliance, are outside the scope of ICE’s immigration and customs enforcement mission and are better aligned with NPPD’s mission. The transfer of FPS to NPPD became effective when the fiscal year 2010 DHS appropriations act was signed into law on October 28, 2009. Figure 1 shows FPS’s move within DHS from ICE to NPPD. To accomplish its mission, in 2011 FPS has a total budget authority of about $1 billion, currently employs 1,225 federal staff, and about 13,000 contract guard staff to secure over 9,000 GSA owned or leased facilities. FPS conducts law enforcement activities as well as risk assessments to reduce facility vulnerability to criminal and terrorist threats and helps to ensure that facilities are secure and occupants are safe. For the transition, FPS, NPPD, ICE, and DHS headquarters components formed a Senior Working Group, co-chaired by the Senior Counselor to the Under Secretary of NPPD, the ICE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management, and the FPS Director. DHS developed a transition plan, the August 2009 FPS-NPPD Transition Plan, which describes DHS’s overall transition planning process and milestones for completing the transition, among other things. The plan shifted FPS’s mission and responsibility for all of its mission-support functions, with the exception of financial accounting services and firearms and tactical training, from ICE to NPPD or other DHS components. While FPS has its own law enforcement personnel to perform its mission responsibilities, it does not perform all of its mission-support functions such as payroll, travel services, and contracting. For this reason, FPS has traditionally relied on GSA and ICE to carry out these functions. For example, while under GSA, FPS’s contracting functions were handled by the contracting component of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, and under ICE, by its Office of Acquisition. The transition plan noted that most transition tasks would be completed by October 2010. In addition, the transition plan noted staff-level working groups were formed that consisted of subject matter experts from each of the agencies, FPS, NPPD, and ICE, to plan in detail the transfer of FPS’s mission and each mission-support function. The working groups were tasked with planning, tracking issues related to the FPS transition, and reporting progress on the transition. Initially, 16 working groups were formed to carry out the transition in 18 mission-support functions, as reflected in figure 2. According to the transition plan, until the transition is complete, ICE is to continue to provide necessary management and operational services through continued agreements in support of FPS or until individual MOAs, MOUs, or SLAs are concluded with NPPD and other DHS headquarters components. For example, for fiscal year 2010, FPS and NPPD signed 12 SLAs with ICE, covering services such as training and development, security management, and IT services, 1 MOA for legal services, and 1 MOU for financial services. These agreements were meant to ensure that there were no lapses in services while mission-support functions were being transferred to either NPPD or DHS headquarters components. In October 2009, FPS’s facility protection mission transferred and its reporting channels were shifted from ICE to NPPD. The Under Secretary of NPPD—through delegation from the Secretary of Homeland Security— assumed operational control of FPS and its mission from ICE with the enactment of the fiscal year 2010 DHS appropriations act. Similarly, the Under Secretary delegated the authority and responsibility to the Director of FPS to continue FPS’s physical security and law enforcement services mission, consistent with the law enforcement authority for the protection of federal property. Upon its transition to NPPD, FPS became a component within the directorate. Figure 3 shows the location of FPS within NPPD’s organizational structure. According to FPS headquarters and regional officials we interviewed, the transition of FPS’s mission from ICE to NPPD occurred without degradation to the mission, and there has been minimal, if any, disruption to FPS’s field operations. Moreover, the regional officials said that the transition has not had an impact on the way FPS performs its mission on a daily basis. FPS officials stated that FPS continued to lead DHS’s security and law enforcement services at more than 9,000 GSA facilities nationwide, and its operational activities, such as conducting facility security assessments, conducting criminal investigations, and responding to critical incidents, continued uninterrupted during and after the transition. Since taking operational control of FPS in October 2009, NPPD and other DHS components have assumed responsibility for 13 of 18 FPS mission- support functions, but the transfer of the remaining 5 mission-support functions from ICE to NPPD or other DHS components has been delayed. In August 2009, DHS reported to Congress that the transition would be completed by October 2010 and estimated it would cost $14.6 million. However, DHS now reports that the transfer of 4 functions will not be completed until the end of fiscal year 2011 or start of fiscal year 2012 and one of these functions will not be transferred until October 2012. For the delayed functions, ICE continues to provide mission support to FPS, and new or revised SLAs were developed to articulate the continuing time frames and services that ICE would provide to FPS. The 18 mission- support functions and their transfer status are presented in table 1. According to DHS officials responsible for executing the FPS transition, the transfer of the 5 mission-support functions will take longer than originally reported to Congress due to a number of factors, including unanticipated costs associated with building the infrastructure within NPPD and other DHS components to support areas such as IT services. As reflected in table 2, the delays in the transition schedule for the delayed mission-support functions range from almost 1 to 2 years. DHS officials explained that the transfer of four mission-support functions— business continuity and emergency preparedness, personnel security, facilities, and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)—are on track to transfer by the end of fiscal year 2011 or start of fiscal year 2012. Specifically, DHS officials explained the following  All activities for the transfer of business continuity and emergency preparedness have been completed but are waiting on NPPD to complete the building of a continuity of operations site, which according to NPPD officials, will be complete by October 2011.  NPPD has moved a Senior Executive Service (SES)-level director into position, and is in the process of establishing an Office of Compliance and Security, which will provide compliance investigations, program review, personnel security, interior physical security, information security, and special security program services throughout NPPD. According to the Acting Director of the Office of Compliance and Security, the goal is to establish this office by October 2011.  NPPD has hired three of the five positions that were created to support FPS facilities management. These personnel, according to the officials, are working with ICE to transfer projects and all of them are expected to transfer by the end of fiscal year 2011.  The only activity required for the transfer of EEO services is to hire staff needed to support FPS within NPPD, which should be completed by the end of fiscal year 2011. While DHS has successfully transferred FPS’s mission and the majority of its mission-support functions, deficiencies in the transition schedule for the transfer of IT services could limit DHS’s ability to ensure the timely transition of this important function. DHS’s transition plan called for working groups to develop comprehensive project management plans (i.e., detailed schedules) with detailed tasks and end dates for the individual mission-support functions to ensure critical path activities were identified, managed, and resourced. DHS did not develop these schedules for all the mission-support functions since, according to DHS officials, in some cases the transfer of a function was relatively easy and did not need a schedule, such as public affairs and legislative affairs. However, the transfer of FPS’s nationwide IT infrastructure and field support is more complex. Because of the complexity of transferring IT services, DHS developed a detailed schedule to manage the transfer of IT services, as called for in the transition plan. As we have previously reported, the success of fielding any program depends in part on having a reliable schedule that defines, among other things, when work activities will occur, how long they will take, and how they are related to one another. As such, the schedule not only provides a road map for systematic execution of a program, but also provides a means by which to gauge progress, identify and address potential problems, and promote accountability.