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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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 post- Katrina 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 extent to which officials responsible for managing the four multi- agency 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 multi- 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. 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 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.