Partnering Against Terrorism Summary of a Workshop (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Panel V: Roundtable on Partnering for National Missions: Defense, Health and Energy 109
Panel V: Roundtable on Partnering for National Missions: Defense, Health and Energy 109
Pages 109-113
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From page 109... ...
Nor did sufficient capability exist across the government; homeland security would require the full participation of many people in the private and academic sectors as well, to implement appropriate technologies and responses. He then posed a series of questions to the panel: · What have we learned from other agencies about how to structure programs, and how to structure this new agency?
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From page 110... ...
Technology has always been the route for the best and brightest people to get really exciting work." At the same time, she said, it may actually be easier to work on a technology problem than to address many of the critical but broader challenges facing the world "You hear that if someone were to come back from Biblical times," she said, "they would be astounded by the technology and wouldn't understand a thing about it. But if you told them about our current geopolitical tensions, they'd understand them perfectly." The point, she said, is that we have made too little progress in solving many of the complex social problems that are limiting the progress of people and nations toward a better quality of life and "the pursuit of happiness," which is why there are still "David's" out there trying to kill the "Goliaths." How do we make progress on those underlying issues?
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From page 111... ...
Bonvillian said that the panels had concentrated mostly on the domestic aspects of homeland security, and reminded the groups to think of terrorism as an international problem. Creating a department in the United States, he said, and creating new defensive elements in this country "only scratches the surface." The country has to learn "how, in effect, to push out our borders and our international connections in a way that I don't think we've spent much time thinking about, at least in the defense sector." He referred to the kind of system suggested by Steve Flynn, and the observation that unless Customs and the Coast Guard have "a good fix" on what is being shipped to our shores by a Czech light bulb manufac
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From page 112... ...
There was also, he said, an "unnecessary amount of diversity in the agency," caused by overbroad legislation that "threw a lot of disparate problems together" including the regulatory Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Agency, and the Federal government's nuclear weapons program. Major related components were left outside the DoE -- in the Environmental Protection Agency, the DoD, NASA, and so on, making complex coordination necessary to merge bureaucracies.
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From page 113... ...
Turner, the DHS would be successful only if it is organized as a single department with a common mission, not as a holding company for a variety of agencies with piecemeal missions. He said that the achievements of the first secretary and the first undersecretary would be critical, as would the organization's executive orders, which is where the executive branch would receive its guidance on objectives and implementation.
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