In one of the first organizational setbacks for the Department of Homeland Security, Congress and the Bush administration seem to be throwing into reverse their initial plans to consolidate most of the money spent to support homeland security research and development under a single banner, DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T).
In the department’s appropriations bill, Congress plans to trim the directorate’s fiscal year 2007 budget by about 36 percent to under $1 billion from nearly $1.5 billion in 2006, even as it grants more money to other cabinet departments for research on homeland security. The bill, which passed both houses but awaits reconciliation, also diverts about $300 million from the Science & Technology Directorate and to a new “Domestic Nuclear Detention Office,” founded just over a year ago to finance research to thwart nuclear attacks. Congress will also return $95 million for early-stage research and development to the Transportation Security Administration, which had jurisdiction over that funding before DHS was formed. Finally, the White House Office of Management and Budget is now performing another of the directorate’s key functions – reviewing all federal homeland security research spending – even though that role was never officially transferred from DHS.
But there’s no mystery about the reversal’s motivation: no one seems to know where S&T has placed its research bets, or even if it has spent all the funds it has been allocated.
When DHS was created in 2003, consolidation of research grants shared the rationale of the entire department: by putting the management of homeland security under one roof, the money would be spent more efficiently, members of Congress said at the time.
“The entire idea of having an S&T directorate was to consolidate all of the department’s R&D into one place,” said Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which periodically publishes analyses of DHS spending, particularly related to S&T. “But now they’re deconsolidating. S&T doesn’t seem to be doing very well, and DHS has had a lot of trouble getting coordinated responses to everything.”
The Science & Technology department has received more than $1 billion in each of the past three years for research and development grants, yet these grants have gotten far less attention than have the state and local anti-terror grants, which have been a source of constant controversy. Most recently, the local grants caused an uproar this summer, when New York City and Washington, D.C., suffered cuts.
But DHS has never released a compilation of the top research and development grants, and officials did not respond to repeated requests for a list.
“They probably don’t have a list compiled,” said Koizumi, who has also tried, unsuccessfully, to find these grants listed in one place during the past three years. “For all of the other R&D agencies, we have data on which states, performers or universities got the research funds, but DHS has not been able to provide that data and has come forward with only the vaguest estimates of how much is going to universities versus companies versus labs.”
Members of Congress have recently started asking questions about the research grants as well. In March, Representative John Linder (R-Ga.) argued in his statement to the Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack that the S&T directorate should be required to issue an annual report to Congress on its activities and programs. He complained: “Due to the lack of information provided by the Department, it is extremely difficult to evaluate the budget of the S&T Directorate.”
The Homeland Security Appropriations bill that followed in the House included a line requiring the Department to provide better financial data next year, particularly from S&T. The House bill also cut funding for S&T by 45 percent – more drastically than the Senate’s 36 percent cut. The two versions will be reconciled by Congress over the next several months.
Koizumi said that Congress trimmed the directorate’s budget because members grew weary of S&T’s apparent lack of a plan to spend its multi-million-dollar grant budget. “Congress is very frustrated because the S&T directorate hasn’t been able to spend the money they have been given and has also been unable to provide in good detail what they have done with the money they have,” Koizumi asserts.
More bitingly, the Senate in its 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriation bill describes the S&T sector as “a rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course.” The bill directs Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to develop a five-year plan for S&T, incorporating performance measures. And it says “developing and implementing this five-year plan is the only way S&T will be successful.”
Despite original intentions, the S&T directorate never controlled all homeland security research money. In fact, DHS received just 25 percent of all federal homeland research money in 2006. The Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services also finance significant R&D in this area.
At DHS, most research grants are handled by the Science and Technology division’s Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), which was modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at the Department of Defense. Ideally, grant managers at DHS review and make decisions on funding requests using a set of DHS-approved criteria. In some cases, such as with funding requested by universities, DHS managers will send those requests to a panel of experts for peer review. Almost any entity can qualify for a grant – universities, companies and non-profit groups have received grants from the Science and Technology division.
Before the department’s formation, 12 agencies that moved under DHS’s umbrella had their own research grant program. The 2002 Homeland Security Bill gave the Undersecretary for Science and Technology Directorate the broad mandate for “directing, funding, and conducting national research, development, test and evaluation, and procurement of technology and systems for preventing radiological and biological attacks; responding to terrorist attacks; and to establish a system for transferring science and technology developments to other agencies.”
But three years after it was created, DHS is still trying to get set up. It still lacks, for example, a working accounting system, Koizumi says.
The S&T Directorate, like other areas of DHS, has also seen rapid turnover among top officials. There have already been two undersecretaries of S&T – Charles McQueary, the directorate’s first undersecretary, resigned in February 2006, and the assistant undersecretary for Science and Technology, Penrose C. Albright, left in May 2006 to spend more time with his family. Dr. Jeffrey Runge, DHS’s chief medical officer, is the division’s acting undersecretary.
Albright has been critical of the department, saying there were management problems from the start. “The government and DHS have a remarkable propensity for trying to solve personnel issues with org chart changes,” he said in an interview.
Throughout the government, funding for homeland security research is decreasing as well as changing in mix. Congress has appropriated less money for it at the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Transportation, and at NASA. In contrast, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation are receiving increases in R&D money for homeland security in fiscal year 2007.
“Congress has chosen now to provide R&D money to agencies that can directly address specific threats,” said Matthew Farr, senior homeland security analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “By funding NIH, they’re trying to address biological threats. Similarly, by funding EPA, they can put more money into environmental monitoring.”
Policy analysts said the drop in funding for S&T is not surprising.
“I think the slowdown in funding for the S&T and R&D grant programs is due to a combination of things,” said Dr. James Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “First, they have a lot of money on hand already, so it’s difficult to justify giving them more. Second, the mission of the S&T Directorate has changed several times. ”
Financial analysts who predict how the government will allocate money as part of their business helping homeland security companies land contracts said they do not view S&T grants as a growing area of opportunity.
“It just comes down to the S&T Directorate having a lot of unused money,” said Farr. “DHS has made a lot of people on the Hill upset by not addressing their concerns.”
Congress, Farr added, is “definitely putting S&T and R&D funding on a much tighter leash.”
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