Homeland Security Enterprise Quadrennial Defense Review

Homeland Security Enterprise Quadrennial Defense Review

The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) performance

The mission of Homeland Security is to secure the country from various threats. The enterprise also operates by focusing on four primary goals. The first goal is to disrupt and prevent terrorist attacks, while the second goal is to protect the American people, their key resources, and crucial infrastructure. The third goal is to recover from and respond to incidents that occur. The fourth goal is continuing to strengthen the foundation to guarantee long-term success. The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) focuses on conducting a comprehensive assessment outlining the long-term strategy, risk, and priorities for homeland security across the United States.

GOA’s findings based on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) mission areas and goals indicated that the enterprise is performing poorly as compared to how it is expected to perform. For example, Homeland Security cannot meet its accounting mission due to various accounting challenges resulting in failure to maintain the required spending rate. The enterprise also has poor documentation of information, thus hindering its ability to conduct a future assessment. Poor documentation further makes it hard for the enterprise to validate the information and test assumptions. The QHRS also only describes Homeland Security’s hazards without prioritizing them to develop effective strategies to eliminate them. This demonstrates a lack of efficient strategies in risk mitigation and identifying required resources. According to the GOA’s findings, the relationship between the enterprise and its stakeholders can be enhanced by engaging them in the formulation of GHRS execution.

Key issues the CRS estimate require congressional attention

One of the key issues that CRS estimates require congressional attention is the assigning of roles and responsibilities. Currently, the enterprise is not providing clear roles and responsibilities hence affecting its general productivity. Therefore, it is important to consider increasing clarity and ensuring that the roles and responsibilities are assigned to people with the right expertise to handle them. Another key issue is the cybersecurity threat. The enterprise has been facing many cybercrimes, which mandates the need to consider measures that can be taken to prevent this issue. The enterprise should consider regularly updating its software to improve cybersecurity. Aslan (2020) argues that regular software updates eliminate weaknesses that cybercriminals exploit to attack a system.

The government’s Homeland Security Enterprise performance assessment

In the government’s homeland enterprise performance assessment, Homeland security needs entrenched and over-centralized politics as well as persistent gratification. The United States has improved its efforts to safeguard the country’s sovereignty by improving security at its borders. The performance assessment of Homeland Security shows that the enterprise has been inconsistent and is unable to deal with political interference. The enterprise is also forced to deal with many long-term security issues because of increased violence, particularly along the United States borders. There has also been a rapid prevalence of nuclear weapons, thus making it hard to limit the damage caused by unexpected attacks. The enterprise needs to consider preparing the local government in charge of dealing with catastrophic events to ensure that there are enough resources to deal with such events when they occur.

Homeland Security also needs to redirect its attention to other security areas instead of directing too much attention to Iraq terrorism. For instance, the enterprise can focus on eliminating illegal immigration because, in most instances, illegal immigrants are the root cause of crimes such as drug trafficking and terrorism (Miller & Peguero, 2018). The enterprise should also consider preventing drug trafficking, thus reducing the supply of funds used in terrorism. This is mainly because drug traffickers fund most terrorist groups (McDonnell & Cozine, 2020). Eliminating the source of funding will reduce the frequency of terrorist attacks and reduce the damage caused by the attacks because terrorists cannot afford expensive, sophisticated attack techniques.

References

Aslan, O. (2020). How to Decrease Cyber Threats by Reducing Software Vulnerabilities and Bugs [Conference session].

McDonnell, K. W., & Cozine, K. (2020). Terrorism: Origins, ideologies, and goals. Theoretical Foundations of Homeland Security, 78-98. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429259920-5

Miller, H. V., & Peguero, A. A. (2018). Immigration and crime. Routledge Handbook on Immigration and Crime, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781317211563-1

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Write 500–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions with your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

This Discussion Board assignment will compare and contrast independent assessments from the General Accounting Office (GAO), Congressional Research Service (CRS), think tanks, and academia on the status of the homeland security (HLS) enterprise. You are required to research federal audits and reports by think tanks and academia to provide a critical analysis on the posture of the homeland security enterprise as it is assessed by independent organizations. Discuss the following:

Using 1 of the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) mission areas and goals, how well is the enterprise performing in GAO’s view? What are the issues or gaps that need to be addressed?
Based on the QHSR mission areas, what are the key issues that the CRS estimate require congressional attention? Do they impact the effectiveness of the enterprise?
Research a think-tank that has a homeland security program. How does the government’s homeland security enterprise performance assessment compare to its assessment of the effectiveness of the enterprise? Are there any critical gaps or issues?