On November 19, after months
of partisan debate over personnel rules and in one of the last actions
of the 107th Congress, the Senate joined the House in giving
final approval to legislation (HR 5710 or HR 5005) that will establish
a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). [President Bush signed the
bill into law on November 25 and announced a reorganization plan to
officially establish the new department in 60 days, on January 24.]
DHS will form through the consolidation of programs from several existing
cabinet-level agencies and various independent agencies with the primary
mission of preventing future terrorist attacks within the United States.
Included under the new DHS umbrella will be agencies such as the Coast
Guard, the Customs Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; all told, the DHS will
bring together nearly 170,000 federal employees and up to $35 billion
in annual budgetary resources in the largest reorganization of the federal
government since the 1940s.
The new
DHS will have significant impacts in science and technology, especially
in S&T related to homeland security. The DHS will have its own S&T
policy infrastructure as well as a significant R&D portfolio of
its own, drawing on transfers of programs from other agencies as well
as newly created R&D programs and R&D performing organizations.
Science and Technology in the new DHS
The final
version of the DHS bill contains provisions creating
the position of an Under Secretary for Science and Technology, missing
from the Bush Administration’s original proposal, to coordinate the
department’s science and technology programs and to oversee its R&D
funding. The Under Secretary, who will report directly to the Secretary
for Homeland Security (Tom Ridge, the current director of the White
House Office of Homeland Security), will be in charge of the Directorate
of Science and Technology, one of four broad directorates in the
new DHS. This Directorate will have responsibility for setting homeland-security
R&D goals and priorities, coordinating homeland security R&D
throughout the federal government, funding its own homeland security
R&D, facilitating the transfer and deployment of technologies for
homeland security, and advising the DHS Secretary on all scientific
and technical matters.
The Under
Secretary will be the apex of a new S&T infrastructure in the DHS,
missing from the original Bush proposal but added by Congress. The Under
Secretary will act as scientific and technical adviser to the Secretary
for Homeland Security and will be assisted by his or her own staff and
will also have the ability to rely on numerous new institutions that
will be created in the coming months. There will be a Homeland Security Advisory Committee
consisting of 20 members appointed by the Under Secretary representing
first responders, citizen groups, researchers, engineers, and businesses
to provide science and technology advice to the Under Secretary. The
DHS could also create a new federally funded research and development
center (FFRDC), the Homeland Security Institute, to act as a think tank
for risk analyses, simulations of threat scenarios, analyses of possible
countermeasures, and strategic plans for counterterrorism technology
development. DHS will also have the authority to contract with existing
FFRDCs for independent analyses on homeland security-related issues.
There will
also be an Office for National Laboratories that will coordinate DHS
interactions with Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories with
expertise in homeland security such as Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and
Los Alamos; the Office can help DHS jointly sponsor R&D at the labs
or can contract directly with the labs for R&D. The Office also
has the authority to establish a semi-independent DHS headquarters laboratory
within an existing federal laboratory, national lab, or FFRDC to supply
scientific and technical knowledge to the DHS.
The legislation
also directs DHS to establish one or more university-based centers for
homeland security, and includes 15 detailed criteria for where to locate
it. It is widely assumed that the 15 criteria are written in such detail
to favor Texas A&M
University.
The legislation
creates a new research agency within the Directorate named the Homeland Security Advanced
Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), modeled on the existing Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Department of Defense
(DOD). HSARPA’s primary program will be the Acceleration
Fund for Research and Development of Homeland Security Technologies,
which will award competitive, merit-reviewed grants for: basic and applied
research to promote revolutionary changes in homeland security technologies;
development and testing of potential homeland security technologies;
and the acceleration or prototyping and developing of homeland security
technologies to get them ready for deployment. The Fund will therefore
have responsibility for the entire spectrum of R&D from basic research
all the way to prototyping new technology products. The legislation
authorizes up to $500 million in FY 2003 for the Fund, but the actual
appropriation will have to be decided as part of the yet-unfinished
FY 2003 budget process.
The DHS R&D Portfolio
The DHS
will fold in R&D programs from three existing departments (DOE,
USDA, and DOT) in addition to the new HSARPA. Precise R&D funding
figures are not available because of the vague parameters of the final
legislation, and also because the FY 2003 budget process was left unfinished
by the 107th Congress. While the original Bush Administration
proposal in June suggested that DHS would have a $3.4 billion R&D
portfolio (AAAS estimate) out of a $37.5 billion budget, the final legislation
suggests a portfolio of up to $800 million (AAAS estimate; see Table)
out of a $35 billion proposed budget. In contrast to the original proposal,
the final legislation keeps federal
bioterrorism R&D programs within the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instead
of transferring them to DHS. Although
the final FY 2003 budget for these programs has not been decided, the
NIH/CDC bioterrorism R&D portfolio could be as much as $2 billion
in FY 2003.
Other counterterrorism
R&D programs in other agencies, notably EPA, DOD, and DOE, will
continue to remain outside DHS (see the August
22 R&D Funding Update on counter-terrorism R&D for information
on the total federal counter-terrorism R&D portfolio.)
Table. Potential DHS R&D Portfolio (in millions of dollars budget authority)
|
R&D Program
|
FY 2003 (Estimate)
|
|
DOE
NISAC
|
$20m
|
|
Other
DOE programs
|
$100m
|
|
HSARPA
(new)
|
$500m
|
|
USDA Plum Island
|
$25m
|
|
DOT
TSA
|
$130m
|
|
DOT
Coast Guard
|
$24m
|
|
|
_____
|
|
Total DHS R&D
|
$799m
|
AAAS
estimates of R&D based on final DHS legislation, OMB and agency
R&D data. Note:
The FY 2003 budgets for these programs have not been decided. The figures
in this table represent preliminary estimates based on the FY 2003 request
or FY 2003 authorization levels.
By directorate,
the DHS R&D portfolio will include:
- Directorate for Information
Analysis and Infrastructure Protection: R&D will not be a large
part of this directorate. The Department
of Energy’s (DOE) National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) moves to DHS. NISAC is a partnership between two of DOE’s
national laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia,
both in New Mexico. NISAC
had a budget of $20 million in FY 2002 and performs R&D to analyze
critical infrastructures and their vulnerabilities, and simulate infrastructure
or biological attack scenarios. The Department of Commerce’s National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Computer Security Division,
part of the NIST laboratories, will not move to DHS as originally proposed.
- Directorate of Science and Technology: This directorate, as noted
above, will contain most of the S&T policy and advisory infrastructure
of the new DHS, as well as a majority of the R&D portfolio. Also
as noted above, the directorate will have responsibility for the newly
created HSARPA, which could have an R&D portfolio of up to $500
million in FY 2003 if the money is appropriated. The original June 6
announcement proposed that all of DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL), with a proposed budget in FY 2003 of $1.2 billion,
would move to DHS but in the final legislation only parts of LLNL such
as its Advanced Scientific Computing Research program and some smaller
programs will move to DHS. Among other DOE programs, the Biological
and Environmental Research program’s microbial pathogens activities,
and the national security and nuclear smuggling and other programs within
Nonproliferation & Verification R&D will move to DHS. The small
DOE Environmental Measurement Laboratory in New
York City will also move to DHS. Because these
programs are embedded within larger programs, it is unclear how large
these transfers will be, but combined they could total around $100 million.
The other
affected department under this directorate is the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Its
Plum Island Animal Disease Center off
Long Island, New York,
with a budget of $25 million and 124 federal employees, will transfer
to DHS. The center is currently funded through USDA’s Agricultural Research
Service (ARS). The new directorate will also house the Department of
Defense’s (DOD) National Bio-Weapons Defense Analysis Center, which
does not yet exist and was proposed in the FY 2003 budget; the final
FY 2003 Defense appropriations bill, however, does not mention this
center, so it is unclear whether this Center will even exist in FY 2003
or whether the Center will fund any R&D.
The final legislation rejects the Administration proposal to transfer
to DHS the civilian biological defense research programs operated by
the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The legislation
keeps all human health-related homeland security research within HHS.
The Administration proposed to transfer bioterrorism-related R&D
from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC; both are HHS agencies), with a proposed
budget of $2.0 billion in FY 2003. The final DHS legislation gives the
DHS Secretary joint authority with the HHS Secretary to set priorities
and strategy for human health-related research on terrorist threats,
but no funding authority.
- Directorate of Border and Transportation Security: This division will
be by far the largest of the four in terms of budget and personnel,
and will integrate federal government operations aimed at securing U.S.
borders and transportation systems. It will fold in the Immigration
and Natural Service, the Customs Service, and the recently created Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) within DOT. This division will inherit
TSA’s R&D program on aviation security, with a requested budget
of $130 million in FY 2003.
- Directorate of Emergency Preparedness
and Response: This division will coordinate all federal assistance
in response to disasters (including natural disasters) and domestic
attacks. There will be no R&D programs within this mission.
- Other agencies: The Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and part of USDA’s
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) will transfer to
the DHS as independent agencies outside of the directorate structure.
The Coast Guard’s $24 million R&D portfolio will become part of
DHS, but it appears that APHIS’s $29 million R&D portfolio will
remain in USDA.
Although
the DHS will have enormous impacts on the federal government and especially
on goods and travelers crossing U.S.
borders, the impact on scientists and engineers is minimal. Few federal
scientists and engineers will be affected except a small number of DOT,
USDA, DOE or DOE contractor employees.
The new priority-setting powers of DHS, however, mean that NIH
bioterrorism research priorities will be set with strong input from
DHS.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
Although
the legislation is now final, it will take years before the DHS reorganization
is complete. Because the 107th Congress left Washington
without completing the FY 2003 budget, all domestic programs are currently
operating at FY 2002 funding levels. As a consequence, there is no money
available to create new programs and organizations such as HSARPA and
other organizations within the new Directorate of S&T, unless funds
can be shifted from other, existing programs. [Congress hopes to finish
work on FY 2003 appropriations in January.
The core offices of DHS
will be established on January 24, including the Under Secretary for
S&T, HSARPA, and the Office for National Laboratories. Most of the
existing agency programs such as the TSA, the DOE programs, and the
Coast Guard will be transferred to the new department on March 1. The
remaining programs including Plum Island will be transferred on June
1; the Homeland Security Advisory Committee will also be established
on that date.
It may be months, however,
before the new department has the necessary resources to begin to organize
its S&T infrastructure.] In the meantime, Congress will have to
reorganize its committee structure to handle the new department, which
could mean changes in appropriations committees and authorizing committees,
with uncertain impacts on the S&T portions of DHS.
AAAS will
continue to monitor the new DHS and its implications for federal R&D
as it organizes, and will update this analysis as events warrant.
(Further AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the AAAS R&D Web
site will provide up-to-date information on R&D in FY 2003 appropriations,
including the eventual funding status of Department of Homeland Security
R&D programs.)
-
November 22, 2002 (updated Dec. 10)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
(new URL)
