DHS management chief’s exit unlikely to bring changes

The resignation of the Homeland Security Department's management chief probably will not result in significant changes to its administrative structure, a DHS official said, despite repeated calls for change from outside observers.

After more than three years as head of the DHS management directorate, Janet Hale announced last week that she will step down in early May. A department official, who asked to remain anonymous because Hale's position requires a presidential appointment, said the vacancy likely will be filled like any other opening.

But Hale's departure creates a perfect opportunity to reconfigure the structure of the department's management branch and give more power to the five line-of-business chiefs serving beneath the management undersecretary, said former Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin. Such a move would not require legislative approval, he said.

Ervin, director of the Aspen Institute's Homeland Security Initiative, said that under the current structure, for example, the department's chief financial officer cannot direct the work of heads of finance at the agencies making up DHS.

"He can persuade them, but he can't require," Ervin said. "Key people within the directorate need the authority to ride herd over the department components."

A recent management report from the office of Richard Skinner, the current DHS inspector general, stated that while progress has been made in integrating the department's separate components, much work remains.

The report, released in December 2005, cited concerns about the dual accountability structure for the management of the department's business functions, which leaves line of business chiefs and their counterparts at the agencies within DHS jointly responsible for integrating systems across the department. The structure could be of particular concern for the positions of chief information officer, chief financial officer and chief procurement officer, the report noted.

The CIO is not well-positioned to integrate the department's communications and information systems, the report stated. Randy Hite, the Government Accountability Office's director of information technology architecture and systems, agreed with that assessment.

"Right now IT funding is spread across the component organizations," Hite said. "If you're trying to control and ... change the make-up of the IT environment, you're going to want to be able to enforce some kind of commonality … not just in terms of standards employed, but in the ways they are managed."

A department spokesman said a January statement from the DHS CIO, Scott Charbo, declaring that he has sufficient authority, still stands.

"I sincerely feel that the present structure and lines of authority grant me what I need in regards to accomplishing my mission," Charbo said. "The secretary and deputy secretary always have their door open to me, and we've had many of discussions."

The DHS management directorate sidestepped major reforms in a July 2005 departmental reorganization, despite much of the same criticism that is being raised now that Hale is on her way out.

Senate legislation (S. 1712) proposed in September 2005 would create a presidentially appointed deputy secretary for management at the department with a five-year term.

The position is modeled after a proposed chief management officer position long-sought-after by GAO for the Defense Department, but the bill, proposed by Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has yet to gain support from other members of Congress.

Ervin said he is agnostic regarding the chief management officer position, but does not believe a five-year term is necessary to get the job done.

Two studies commissioned by the Defense Department in fulfillment of a requirement in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act will examine the idea of a management deputy at the Pentagon and the results, which are due at the end of the year, could influence the proposed DHS position, said Nanci Langley, Democratic deputy staff director of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management.