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The US Department of Homeland Security: From the Ground Up

In Part 1 of our series, we investigate the context, fears and executive orders that shaped the formation of DHS

Then there are the cultural issues. Employees must change their mind-sets from loyalty to their legacy agencies to loyalty to DHS. That's a difficult transition, especially for those who've served in one agency for a long time and take pride in its history and traditions (Customs, for example, dates back to 1789). Also, the government has always been organized around stovepipes. Agency leaders jealously guard their turf, and many employees have little interaction with agencies outside their four walls. Now DHS employees must think of themselves as working for a larger entity and coordinate and share in ways they've never had to before. (One only needs to look at the lack of intelligence-sharing among agencies like the FBI and CIA to know that agency insularity won't change overnight.)

Leadership is extremely important, and Ridge has the confidence of the president and wide support in Congress to lead the department. However, DHS has experienced worrisome turnover in other key positions. Richard Clarke and Howard Schmidt, two of the Bush administration's top cybersecurity officials, both resigned last year (Clarke has criticized what he sees as the administration's loss of focus on cybersecurity in recent months). Deputy Secretary Gordon England and Paul Redmond, assistant secretary for information analysis, also both left in 2003 (Redmond stirred controversy last June when he testified before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security that he had only 26 intelligence analysts after five months). "Homeland security is a big, unifying force," says Yim. "But it doesn't help that you've had top management turnover, criticism about lack of transparency and lack of a strategic plan."

Intelligence-sharing remains a hot-button issue. DHS is still trying to figure out how to work with DoD, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and other intelligence agencies, and those agencies are grappling with their own sharing issues. A report the Department of Justice released in December shows how far there is to gotwo years after 9/11, the FBI still gets poor marks for sharing intelligence both within its ranks and with other agencies. And a GAO report released last August, which surveyed federal, state and local officials, found that information-sharing processes have a long way to gojust 13 percent of federal government respondents said that sharing with states and cities is "effective" or "very effective," and only 15 percent of the large cities that responded said they receive information about the movement of known terrorists. These reports suggest that information-sharing will likely remain an albatross around DHS's neck for the foreseeable future.