Financial Times November 22, 2002
A battle of American bureaucracy
By Edward AldenPresident George W. Bush (pictured), was not given long to enjoy his victory this week in winning congressional support for creating a new Department of Homeland Security. As the Senate was finally approving the bill to force together 22 agencies and 170,000 employees into a single department to protect America against terrorist attacks, immigration advocates, business lobbyists and city officials were already predicting disaster.
Angela Kelly, deputy director of the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum, said the flaws in the new department, to include the current Immigration and Naturalisation service, "threaten to make serious fiascos, long waits, red-tape nightmares and security lapses more likely, not less".
US exporters and importers grumbled that the customs service - which for 213 years has been housed in the business-friendly Department of Treasury - was likely now to be more concerned with keeping dangerous shipments out than with letting their goods flow across the border in a timely and cost-efficient way. And the National League of Cities blasted the failure to provide extra money for the police, fire and other emergency services that must respond to any terrorist attack.
The early complaints are a clear sign of just how immense a task still awaits the Bush administration in trying to blend together myriad different agencies into a coherent department that will make the country safer against terrorist threats. Paul Light, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, calls it "arguably the most difficult reorganisation in bureaucratic history".
The new department will include not only customs, immigration and emergency management but also the Border Patrol, the US Secret Service, the Agriculture Department's food safety division and several health agencies. Since September 11 2001, each has played an important role in securing the country against terrorists or preparing to respond in the event of future attacks. But each also has a plethora of other missions that have little or nothing to do with terrorism.
"The fundamental problem they're going to have is striking a balance between performing the traditional functions of these agencies and performing their new functions," says John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, a defence research group. "There will be tremendous constituencies for the old ways of doing things and it's not clear there will be offsetting constituencies lobbying for new priorities."
The creation of the department will certainly be the most ambitious US government reorganisation since 1947, when President Harry Truman persuaded Congress to force together the army and war departments into a single Department of Defence. For 40 years after that, the new department was largely seen as a failure.
The military services - the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine - had separate histories and traditions and strong supporters in Congress were determined to maintain those divisions. The result was crippling inter-service rivalries that sapped US military effectiveness.
As recently as 1983, during the invasion of Grenada, in which the US managed to lose 18 soldiers against a hopelessly backward adversary, the different services were virtually unable to fight joint operations. The army commander in charge of the ground operation could not communicate with navy warships offshore, or with the Marines who were storming the other side of the island. It was not until 1986 that Congress at last overhauled the Pentagon to deal with such problems.
The Department of Transportation, a similarly mammoth department that fused 30 agencies and 95,000 employees in 1967, took nearly as long to work out its internal conflicts. And critics say the Department of Energy, created in 1977 at the height of energy crisis, has yet to evolve into a coherent, functioning bureaucracy. Like the new homeland department, the energy department brought together vastly different agencies that were only vaguely linked, with responsibilities ranging from nuclear weapons production to energy conservation. "It never came together as a coherent entity because solar power and hydrogen bombs don't have anything in common," says Mr Pike.
Indeed, the administration did not plan for such a department initially. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mr Bush moved quickly to create a White House office of homeland security and to bring one of his closest political confidantes - Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor - to head the effort. Mr Ridge is now the leading candidate to head the new department.
While many congressional Democrats were urging the president to create a cabinet-level department, Mr Bush insisted for nearly eight months that White House co-ordination of separate agencies involved in homeland defence was a better solution. The goal was to emulate the National Security Council's role on foreign policy and defence matters.
But with the revelations earlier this year of US intelligence failures before the September 11 attacks, pressure on the administration became so strong that the president switched gears in June and announced his support for a new department. By the time of the November 5 election, Mr Bush had become such a persuasive advocate that he blamed the Democrats for holding up the bill, helping the Republicans to regain control of the Senate.
Having embraced the new department, Mr Bush and Mr Ridge will now be held responsible for making it work. And problems are percolating even before a single office has been moved. On immigration, advocates complain the new structure gives massive powers to the enforcement arm of the agency - the part designed to keep terrorists out - while according much lesser status to the task of helping legal immigrants to enter the country.
Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says dividing enforcement from service "will impede efficient, effective and fair adjudications and enforcement practices that are essential to our economy."
On customs issues, the International Chamber of Commerce, which represents business globally, will urge the agency to work closely with business to ensure that new security measures do not hamper the efficiency or reliability of global transport. Robert Bonner, the customs commissioner, tried to assure business groups this week that their concerns would "continue to be heard loud and clear".
And there is still frustration from some in Congress that the new department will have no role in gathering or analysing the intelligence that is critical to thwarting terrorist attacks. Instead it will have to rely on information supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA, which are also struggling to reconfigure to fight the war on terrorism.
On top of the specific complaints, the Bush administration will have to soothe a lot of bruised feelings among employees of the agencies that will make up the new department. In one of his final victories over Senate Democrats, Mr Bush forced through language that will rob the new employees of many of the traditional civil service job protections.
Supporters say that more flexible work rules are critical to allow the department to carry out its new tasks. But the president of the union representing federal workers says the new rules will make the department's employees scared to speak out about problems in the agency.
Mr Pike predicts that management failures and incoherence at the new department will be a running problem for more than a decade. But the task of hardening the country against global terrorist attacks is so critical, he says, that such problems cannot be tolerated. "Terrorists are going to be looking for the soft spots."
© Copyright 2002 Financial Times
