FORMER CEO WARNS AGAINST BURDENS ON HOMELAND SECURITY LEADERS
Effective congressional oversight of proposed Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) must be maintained without imposing burdensome rules and regulations on its leaders, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine told presidential panel Thurs. Effective implementation of 4-unit cabinet-level entity, which would include creation of Information Analysis & Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness & Response divisions, “will require a lot of relief from Congress,” Augustine told President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).
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“Plan carefully, but implement quickly,” Augustine suggested in HSAC meeting in Washington. Although nation’s Founding Fathers didn’t envision that govt. be run like commercial business -- in order to ensure that checks and balances were built into federal system -- Congress nonetheless should avoid crafting DHS organizational structure so tightly controlled that administrators suffered from “risk aversion,” he said. “Give them a chance to fail,” he said, emphasizing that DHS leadership must be encouraged to take bold steps toward ensuring domestic security.
Office of Homeland Security Dir. Tom Ridge and other members expressed confidence President’s National Homeland Security Strategy was workable, but acknowledged that movement of DHS legislation would be more difficult in Senate than it had been in House. “We've got some work to do with our friends in the Senate,” Ridge said.
Ridge said current task was to elevate national strategy from “the visionary phase to the implementation phase.” Proposed consolidation of nearly 2 dozen agencies whose functions include cybersecurity and communications network protection can be executed successfully, he said. However, Ridge warned that “simply channeling old money to a new system will not maximize our ability to protect our way of life.”
Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt (R) said despite fact that agencies would be brought under umbrella of one department, each should continue to serve distinct functions. He said that in order preserve their functions -- while effectively restructuring federal security units in pursuit of common national goal -- policymakers should liken implementation of DHS to linking of several communications networks, rather than merging of electronic components into single mainframe computer.