(This
analysis is a preview of the DHS chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXIII:
Research and Development FY 2009, a comprehensive look at the President's
budget for R&D in FY 2009. This analysis contains revised AAAS estimates of
DHS R&D, different from figures originally presented in the President's budget.
More tables and continually updated supplemental materials on R&D in the FY
2009 budget can be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) R&D portfolio shrank in 2007 because
of congressional dissatisfaction with the new department’s R&D efforts, but
has since steadied and would expand by 4.1 percent or $41 million to $1.0 billion
in FY 2009 (see Table II-6). The increase would be
almost 14 percent excluding a bumper crop of 2008 R&D earmarks.
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R&D on radiological and nuclear countermeasures in the Domestic Nuclear Detection
Office (DNDO) would continue to gain slightly with a $5 million or 1.8 percent
boost to $279 million, while chemical and biological countermeasures in the Science
and Technology Directorate would fall (down 3.7 percent to $200 million).
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University Programs funding would fall from $49 million in both 2007 and 2008
down to $44 million in 2009.
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In addition, DHS will receive $2.2 billion in already-appropriated funds for Project
Bioshield in 2009, to procure promising biodefense countermeasures from the private
sector for the national stockpile.
DHS R&D in the FY 2009 Budget
After starting from virtually nothing four years
ago and rapidly becoming the seventh-largest R&D funding agency, the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) 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 head of
the DHS S&T Directorate for the past 18 months, the entire DHS R&D operation
is still 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 FY 2009 budget request would continue
this new structure and would boost funding after two years of retrenchment. The
DHS R&D portfolio for FY 2009 would be $1.0 billion, an increase of $41 million
or 4.1 percent over 2008. Adjusting for $82 million in 2008 R&D earmarks that
DHS would cut out in 2009 results in a nearly 14 percent increase for DHS core
R&D programs. R&D remains a small but significant part of the overall
DHS budget, which would total $50.5 billion in 2009, an apparent cut but actually
an increase when emergency disaster relief funds in 2008 are excluded (see Table
II-6). (Note: The AAAS estimates of DHS R&D in Table II-6 differ significantly
from R&D data in the Budget of the U.S. Government FY 2009. 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.)
Radiological and
nuclear countermeasures R&D in the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO)
continues to be the largest part of the DHS R&D portfolio in 2009 (see
Figure 1). DNDO was carved out of the S&T Directorate in 2006 and is now a
stand-alone entity devoted to radiological and nuclear countermeasures. Its basic
and applied research portfolio would increase slightly by 1.8 percent or $5 million
to $279 million in 2009 within a total budget of $564 million. (The difference
between the two totals is procurement of nuclear detection devices for U.S.
ports of entry, management costs, and operations support costs.) In 2009, the
largest increases for DNDO would go to the procurement side instead of the research
side. But within the research portfolio
the Transformational Research and Development program, tending toward the basic
research end with a focus on transformative breakthroughs, would receive a large
$17 million increase to $113 million.
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
The chemical and biological
countermeasures portfolio, which remains in the S&T directorate, would receive
$200 million, down 3.7 percent from the current year
to remain the second-largest part of the DHS R&D portfolio (see Figure 1).
Although this portfolio has been larger in previous years, in 2007 DHS spun off
non-R&D programs such as the BioWatch surveillance system to other DHS units,
leaving behind only purely R&D programs. Separately, in the Laboratory Facilities
appropriation ($147 million, up $43 million), construction of the National Biodefense
Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) would be finished in 2008 and the
FY 2009 request of $33 million, double this year’s funding, would be used to start
operations. NBACC will be part of a biodefense complex of DHS, NIH, and DOD facilities
at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
There would also be $36 million, more than triple 2008 funding, for detailed design
of the National Bio and Agrodefense Facility, working toward the beginning of
construction in 2010 after a site selection later this year.
Funding for University
Programs would fall $6 million down to $44 million in 2009. 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, one funded
jointly with EPA and another with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and up to six more could be awarded soon.
The
Innovation portfolio, to develop breakthrough technologies and highly innovative
approaches to homeland security problems, would expand 36 percent to $45 million
in the DHS request, but Congress last year failed to approve a similar increase.
Among the technologies this program will tackle are liquid explosives detection,
container security, mobile screening technologies, tunnel detection devices, improvised
explosive devices, and critical infrastructure resiliency.
The
2009 DHS R&D Request in Historical Context
Figure 2. (click on the image for
PDF)
DHS
R&D, after a rapid ramp-up phase, 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 expanded rapidly 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. 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. Although the 2007 and 2008 R&D
totals were well below appropriations of previous years, DHS was 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 had nearly $300 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; now, S&T estimates only $65
million in unspent funds by the end of FY 2008.
But
now, it may be the new DNDO that runs into problems in ramping up its operations.
In the recent 2008 omnibus bill, appropriators expressed concern that DNDO has
been unable to hire staff quickly enough to keep up with the rapid growth in its
budget, and criticized DNDO for providing too little detail on how it plans to
spend its appropriations. These concerns, if left unaddressed, could be signs
of trouble for the 2009 appropriations season.
Impacts
of the DHS R&D Portfolio
Figure 3. (click on the image for
PDF)
DHS
spends its R&D in roughly equal thirds devoted to intramural laboratories,
industrial firms, and FFRDCs (national laboratories, mostly DOE labs; see Figure
3). To date, only a small portion of DHS R&D has gone to universities, just
3 percent in the most recent year for which figures are available.
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, but the portfolio is diversifying as DHS ramps up its
efforts in several new research topics. Initially, two-thirds of DHS investments
in basic and applied research went to the life sciences and engineering, but the
latest data show increasing investments in the physical sciences (see Figure 4)
as the emphasis shifts away from biological countermeasures toward the DNDO radiological
and nuclear countermeasures portfolio. The total research portfolio is expected
to keep growing, as research becomes a larger part of DHS R&D and development
funding shrinks.
Figure 4. (click on the image for
PDF)
(More
materials on R&D in the FY 2009 budget, historical data and charts, and more
information on AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009, can
be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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February 20, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
