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Go to: -Table.
Dept. of Homeland Security R&D in FY 2008 House Appropriations PDF
version of this document Main
R&D in the FY 2008 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "DHS R&D Holds
in 2008 After Steep Cuts in 2007," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D
in the FY 2008 DHS Budget AAAS Analysis
of R&D in the FY 2008 Budget -
| Highlights -
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) R&D portfolio fell sharply
in 2007 because of congressional dissatisfaction with the new department’s R&D
efforts, but with new leadership and a new Congress the House would give DHS R&D
programs a 3.3 percent increase to $986 million in 2008 (see Table). -
Although the House would provide $11 million less than the request for total DHS
R&D, for University Programs there would be a $10 million boost to the request
to keep funding even at last year’s level. DHS would support 11 university-based
centers by 2008. -
Research on radiological and nuclear countermeasures would continue to increase,
by 3.1 percent to $317 million in the newly created Domestic Nuclear Detection
Office (DNDO), but within main Science and Technology Directorate chemical and
biological countermeasures R&D would fall 6.2 percent to $215 million. -
The House would go along with the newly restructured S&T Directorate’s plan
to cut funding for most R&D areas, but the new Innovation program to develop
revolutionary technological breakthroughs would see its funding jump from $38
million to $52 million. DHS R&D in FY 2008 House Appropriations The 110th Congress kicked off its
FY 2008 appropriations process earlier this month with the House Appropriations
Committee’s approval of its first bill of the year, the 2008 Homeland Security
appropriations bill (HR 2638). The full House is expected to debate and approve
the bill the week of June 11 as the first step toward its goal of approving 11
of the 12 2008 appropriations bills by the Fourth of July. The House Homeland
Security bill contains more than $36 billion in 2008 discretionary spending for
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), $4 billion or 14 percent more than
the current year and $2 billion more than the President’s request. Included in the bill is nearly $1 billion
($986 million) for DHS R&D (see Table), slightly
less than the request but $31 million or 3.3 percent more
than 2007, though a steep drop from the $1.3 billion DHS had in 2006. The still-new Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) continues to lead the government effort against terrorism and to coordinate
government-wide responses to man-made as well as natural disasters, but is experiencing
growing pains as it tries to coordinate its many activities and execute its many
missions. After starting from virtually nothing four years ago and rapidly becoming
the seventh-largest R&D funding agency, the department’s Science and Technology
(S&T) unit ran into trouble spending money, knowing where the money went,
and linking R&D to the technology requirements of DHS operating units. Under
the leadership of Undersecretary of S&T Jay Cohen, the new head of the DHS
S&T Directorate, the entire DHS R&D operation is reorganizing. Cohen proposed
an extensive restructuring of the DHS R&D portfolio in the 2008 budget request,
consolidating many program lines and reshuffling others to create new program
portfolios. The House Appropriations Committee has agreed to Cohen’s proposal
and would fund DHS R&D in 2008 under his proposed structure, as shown in the
Table. As in past years, R&D against threats from
weapons of mass destruction dominates the DHS R&D portfolio (see Table
and Figure 1). Radiological and nuclear countermeasures R&D in the new
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) would be the largest part of the DHS
R&D portfolio in 2008 (see Figure 1), with nearly a third of the
total investment. DNDO was carved out of the S&T Directorate last year and
is now a stand-alone entity devoted to radiological and nuclear countermeasures.
Its mainly applied research portfolio would climb 3.1 percent to $317 million
in 2008 within a total budget of $516 million. (The difference between the two
totals is procurement of nuclear detection devices for U.S. ports of entry, and management costs.) The 2008
House increase would have been larger, except that just a few weeks ago on May
25 DNDO received an extra $35 million for R&D (and $100 million for non-R&D
procurement) for 2007 as part of the war supplemental bill. The House would agree with DNDO’s
plan for large increases in transformational R&D to try to develop breakthrough
methods of detecting radiological and nuclear threats in operational settings,
and in systems development of new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (APS) systems.
DNDO’s R&D programs support the office’s plan of
deploying radiation detection technologies at all U.S. seaports and all land ports of entry by 2013 to
screen 100 percent of U.S.-bound cargo for radiological or nuclear devices.  Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF) The
chemical and biological countermeasures portfolio would receive $215 million in
the House plan, $14 million less than both 2007 and the 2008 request (see Figure
1). Although this portfolio has been larger in previous years, in 2007 DHS spins
off non-R&D programs such as the BioWatch surveillance
system to other DHS units, leaving behind only purely R&D programs such as
development of next-generation BioWatch 3 systems to
better identify bioterror attacks. Separately, in the
Laboratory Facilities appropriation ($89 million, down 16 percent), construction
of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures
Center (NBACC) continues toward a target completion date of 2008. NBACC will be
part of a biodefense complex of DHS, NIH, and DOD facilities
at Fort Detrick, Maryland. There would also be $11 million in funding for preliminary work on
the National Bio and Agrodefense Facility, working toward
the beginning of construction in 2010 after a site selection later this year.
Funding
for University and Fellowship Programs would stay at $49 million in the House
appropriation instead of a requested cut down to $39 million. This program funds
university-based Centers of Excellence that are multi-year university consortia
to perform R&D on homeland security-related topics and also fellowships to
encourage U.S. students to pursue scientific and technical degrees
in areas of study related to homeland security. There are now seven DHS Centers of Excellence, and another four (on the areas of explosives detection,
mitigation, and response; border security and immigration; maritime, island, and
extreme/remote environment security; and natural disasters, coastal infrastructure,
and emergency management) will be awarded in 2007. Two of the existing seven centers
are cooperative centers, one a DHS-EPA effort and the other a DHS-Lawrence Livermore
(DOE) collaboration. The
Explosives portfolio would receive the requested $64 million in the House bill,
down almost 40 percent from last year and down nearly three-quarters from 2006
as a concentrated burst of development activities to defend against shoulder-fired
aircraft missiles winds down and transitions to deployment on commercial aircraft.
The Innovation portfolio, a Cohen initiative to develop breakthrough technologies
and highly innovative approaches to homeland security problems, would gain $14
million or 37 percent to $52 million in the House bill. Among the technologies
this new program will tackle are tunnel detection devices, improvised explosive
devices, and critical infrastructure resiliency. 2008
DHS R&D Appropriations in Historical Context  Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF) DHS
R&D, after a rapid ramp-up phase, by all accounts grew too rapidly and is
now in retrenchment and reorganization. As shown in Figure 2, DHS began life with
only a few R&D laboratories and programs that it inherited from USDA, DOE,
and DOD, unlike the massive transfer of personnel and capabilities that happened
in the rest of the new department. From a transfer of less than $300 million of
programs in 2002, DHS began rapidly creating new R&D capabilities after its
foundation in FY 2003 (see Figure 2), adding portfolios on long-neglected technology
areas, establishing relationships with existing national laboratories and federal
laboratories, and setting up new structures for funding external R&D. But
the S&T directorate struggled to ramp up its capabilities, staffing, and spending,
prompting Congress to slash its funding dramatically in 2007 and impose numerous
restrictions and demands. In the 2007 appropriations process, a congressional
report described the directorate as “a rudderless ship without a clear way to
get back on course,” criticized its lack of clear research goals, absence of detailed
budget information, mystifying accounting conventions, and even an inability to
spend past appropriations it had been given. At the end of 2006, the S&T Directorate
had an unusually large $400 million in the bank from previous appropriations that
it had been unable to spend, and up to one-third of its staff positions were vacant.
The final 2007 appropriations bill rescinded $125 million in these unspent R&D
funds, made program cuts in most areas, and required S&T to submit a five-year
research plan with priorities, performance measures, and resource needs for each
R&D area. Undersecretary
for Science and Technology Jay Cohen was sworn in as the new S&T directorate
leader in August 2006, midway through the bruising 2007 appropriations season
and also midway through the internal deliberations on the 2008 budget. The 2008
budget marks the new leadership’s first budget proposal, and so far House appropriators
appear to be in general agreement with his structural changes and his spending
plans. Although the 2007 and 2008 R&D totals are well below appropriations
of previous years, DHS is still working through its backlog of unspent funds;
at the end of FY 2007, even after rescissions and budget cuts, the S&T Directorate
still expects to have more than $100 million in unspent funds to carry over to
FY 2008. So while DHS’ appropriations history in Figure 2 is uneven, the actual
outflow of money will be smoother as appropriations get stretched out into outlays
over several years. Impacts
of the DHS R&D Portfolio 
Figure
3. (click on the image for PDF) Recently,
DHS released its first data set on how it spent its initial R&D budgets. As
shown in Figure 3, DHS R&D is concentrated geographically, with three states
and the District
of Columbia
accounting for the majority of DHS R&D funding in 2004. Though it is likely
that DC’s share is due to headquarters funds that eventually went to other states,
Maryland and Virginia clearly benefit from the heavy concentration of
contractors in the Washington, DC
area, while California and New Mexico benefit from the primarily DOE-affiliated national
laboratories located in these states. DHS
research, excluding development funding, is heavily oriented to the life sciences
and engineering, not surprising since biological countermeasures dominated the
early days of DHS R&D. Fully two-thirds of DHS investments in basic and applied
research go to these two disciplines, with the remainder devoted mostly to the
physical sciences (see Figure 4). This portfolio is expected to shift in 2007
and 2008 as the emphasis shifts away from biological countermeasures toward the
radiological and nuclear countermeasures portfolio. The total research portfolio
is expected to grow as well, as research becomes a larger part of DHS R&D
and development funding shrinks. 
Figure
4. (click on the image for PDF) Next
Steps and Outlook The
full House is expected to approve the Homeland Security bill this week (June 12);
although many amendments are expected, few changes are likely for R&D. The
Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to mark up its version of the bill
within the next several weeks; it is unclear whether the Senate will share the
same priorities for DHS R&D as the House. A final version of the bill is expected
to reach the President’s desk well before the October 1 start of FY 2008. Although
the President has threatened to veto any 2008 appropriations that exceed his request,
as the House version does by $2 billion, it may be difficult for the President
to veto a bill that funds politically powerful homeland security programs.
Note: The AAAS estimates of DHS R&D in the
Table differ significantly from R&D data in the Budget of the U.S. Government FY 2008. AAAS has corrected inaccurate codings of non-R&D programs as R&D, added back some
R&D funding left out of the Budget, and removed some non-R&D programs
from the R&D data after examination of DHS budget documents. The data in the
Table also differ from data in the April report AAAS
Report XXXII: R&D FY 2008 because of recent transfers out of the S&T
directorate and because of 2007 supplemental appropriations enacted in May in
Public Law 110-28. -
June 12, 2007
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
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Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
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