Homeland Security: Case Study PDF

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10/9/2017 PA 3110: Section 1 Homeland Security: Case Study The many threats that occur around the world are in the hands of the Department of Homeland security. They take lead on evaluating and coordinating with the other federal, state, local and private entities to ensure the most effective response is being taken place. Their main duties is to ensure safety and security of the United States from terrorist attacks and other disasters. Since the Catastrophe incident that occurred September 11th, 2001 it was stated that the DHS needs to strengthen their task and cooperate more with the state and local government on any incidents that come their way. The mission of DHS is to secure America by preventing and deter terrorist attacks, protect against and respond to threats and hazards of the nation and ensure safe and secure borders to welcome legal immigrants. Within their mission to protect America their main goal they need to improve on is the communication with state and local government. This reflects and goes along with the Marble cake federalism. Since DHS is part of the federal government they need to report and make sure they interact with the state and locals on the incidents they have found occurring so more help can be available and the employees of these governments can work out a plan to stop the act from occurring. According, to DHS the six goals that help with their strategic planning is Making Awareness by identifying and understanding the type of threat; Prevention by deterring the treat to America; Response by taking lead to coordinate a liable response to the act; Recovery by leading the state and local sectors to restore and rebuild any damages; Service by providing their

needs to the community and Organizational excellence by bringing everyone together promoting teamwork and respect to the communities (Stephens & Wikstrom, 2007, pg. 55) . However, the strategic planning associated with DHS states that they will cooperate and work with local and state government in a couple of the following areas. They will collect and analyze the terrorism intelligence, share all the information with other parties, secure the safety of the world leaders, strengthen the world preparation of disasters, and have strong protection over the environment technology system and transportation. With these strategic planning it helps the state and local government get access to the information that the DHS has collected so everyone is up to date and aware of their surrounding when dealing with any major threat or disasters. In other words, there have been criticism dealing with the duties the DHS haven’t fulfilled and met. The first, explains how they haven’t fully coordinated the activities they will partake in with the state and local government meaning they don’t share the information about terrorist threats with the states. Instead, they collect the information and fail to reply the facts over so the other parties have knowledge of what’s going on. The second, explains that money grated from DHS has been given to states who have less threats towards them and the states with more threats such as New York City has been getting less grants. The problem here is that the less money going towards the states with high threats doesn’t help them purchase equipment and implement the high training for their officers during a possible attack. The last, explains how the local government in the states weren’t involved in the DHS planning process which means the first responders such as police officers, firefighters and other local officials were being short changed and not given the right amount of money for their services (Stephens & Wikstrom, 2007, 59-60). However, when dealing with the DHS they have achieved many success within their

mission but also, came across many challenges before achieving their success. One challenge that struggled with them was providing the local and state government with the appropriate information in a timely matter. This was a major challenge because as quickly as they received the information, they struggled to pass it along. Another, challenge they came across was given money away to the areas that wasn’t too much at risk of threats and not giving too much to the areas that was. This goes back to the example about giving money away to states such as North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming but not to New York City, Florida and California. This was also, a major challenge because the states with the less money wouldn’t have been able to help their community or state in protection because of the lack of training and resources provided. Lastly, having difficulty involving all the twenty-two agencies and bureaus with the activities that was going on was a challenge to the DHS because for them to communicate with each agency they lacked having to deal with the problem right on (Stephens & Wikstrom, 2007 , pg. 61). In conclusion, one main change I would make to the structure of the DHS is the communication. The major thing as a whole they have been lacking is their communication with the other agencies, the government and bureaus. I personally think if there is a way these parties can get the information of what’s going on, it would make everything easier. There should be a system within each agency where they are allowed to type in information around to one another about any attack or incident that is occurring or that occurred already. If agencies had their own quick personal communication within one another there wouldn’t be any problems about who knows and who doesn’t know what is happening because once the DHS gets the information it will automatically go out to the others.

APA Citation Stephens, Ross, C., & Wikstrom, N. (2007). American Intergovernmental Relations: A Fragmented Federal Policy. New York, NY....