The Department of Homeland Security & Arbitrary Governance
“I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.” — Ben Franklin
I work for an organization that finished last in the “Best Places” ranking for the third consecutive year as employee satisfaction and commitment dropped three points to 44 percent. Internal employee polling indicates that confidence in management showed a dramatic decline over the same period of time. Recently they committed to reviewing their programs for selecting and training executives to find out whether any changes are needed. A recent exodus of employees has exacerbated the organization’s leadership problems, with workers leaving at nearly twice the rate of comparable organizations overall during the past four years, according to a Washington Post review of federal data.
What is the value of our product? Are we still profitable? What are the customer service numbers? Are the shareholders nervous? What about the CEO and the Board of Directors? All relevant questions if we were a private company. Shouldn’t these standards apply to a nonprofit as well? Who is this nonprofit? Why none other than the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Is it any wonder, when you are disparaged by the Administration, embarrassed in public on Capitol Hill, and pilloried in the media? The answer…
Focus groups and task forces were established and studies commissioned to determine the underlying causes. Senator McCaskill (D) from Missouri recently wrote to ask Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to account for the effort and expense. She observed, “The volume of reports that DHS has commissioned to address these issues is concerning, and morale continues to remain low. It is unclear who is commissioning these reports and who, if anyone is reading them.”
Many fail to realize that DHS is not a single organization comprised of 20 plus departments sharing a common mission, capability and resources under a unified command structure. Unfortunately, this is a common misconception. DHS spends approximately $61 billion annually and employs more than 240,000 people. It includes many different components, directorates, offices, and programs with a broad range of missions from protecting the president to maritime law enforcement to border security.
Today, DHS is a federation of essentially wholly-owned subsidiaries that under the current congressional rules it is accountable to responding to inquiries from more than 90 committees and subcommittees that have some jurisdiction to conduct oversight of DHS. You would find that this is at least three times the number of committees that oversee the entire Department of Defense, an agency with an anticipated budget of $585.2 billion (FY16) employing more than 3 million people.
Representative Bob Goodlatte (R) from Virginia attributes the decline in morale to, among other factors, administration policies that “conflict with their congressionally mandated jobs of securing the border, enforcing our immigration laws, and maintaining our immigration system.” Mr. Goodlatte urged the President “to stop wasting taxpayer funds paying for a consulting firm to determine the reason for low employee morale, when a much more straightforward solution is obvious: allow DHS employees to enforce U.S. immigration laws as currently written.” The 9/11 Commission in 2004 warned that “so long as oversight is governed by current Congressional rules and resolutions, we believe that the American people will not get the security they want and need.” The findings of this report, including DHS’s failure to achieve its mission as a cohesive organization working to common objectives, substantiate this 11 year-old recommendation.
Simply put, there are too many cooks in the kitchen. DHS’s most senior leadership lacks the latitude to address operational and, by extension, morale problems in the face of divided leadership and priorities in the Administration, House and Senate. The DHS Secretary has been relegated to a roll of figurehead or spokesperson responsible for defending the administration’s policies. He lacks the delegated authority and therefore the power to oversee, question, and set priorities for DHS and provide consistent, strategic direction to move the organization forward and address the underlying causes of the insidious morale problem.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Homeland Security, or the United States government.
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