General George Patton was quoted as saying, “Take calculated risk. That is quite different from being rash.” Great success can be obtained by calculating risks. Lives can be saved, infrastructure protected, and evil avoided, but how does one calculate risk? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed a risk management system to help address risks, primarily terrorism risks. It is important to realize that this is a system. Comprising this system of risk management are some key steps, such as the risk assessment and decision making. The overall risk management process employed by DHS is still in a stage of evolution and provides many areas of debate. The Department of Homeland Security’s Risk Management Fundamentals (2011) document provides extensive information on their process and components of risk management from the perspective of homeland security. The process, as identified on page 14 of the document, is very similar to many other processes in government and administration, but does provide a good foundation for how homeland security employs risk management.
“Defining and framing the context of decisions and related goals and objectives” This first portion of the process is a standard, lackluster formality. When a task is to be completed, the parameters must be set. While some of the parameters are extremely basic, such as who will be involved, others provide significant importance, such as what the scope will be. One of the more important parameters
As we move into a new era were a more robust and urgent homeland security program is needed, it is important to talk about how officials are managing all of the risk. There are a multitude of threats; from terrorism, where tactics are all the more unconventional an unpredictable, to climate change, with extreme weather conditions causing severe droughts or other catastrophic storms. The risk accepted by federal officials must be weighed and prioritized in a manner that is conducive to the longevity of the nation but also eliminates political or other personal agenda. To ensure a standardized approach the Department of Homeland Security adopted a risk management. The following will look at defining what risk management is as well as an example of how it is being incorporated within the homeland security enterprise and how doing so is of benefit.
As a Chief executive, the president’s main duties are to enforce and execute laws however they see fit. The President signs executive orders directing law enforcement agencies, including the agencies that enforce immigration laws, that has “prosecutorial discretion”– the power to decide whom to investigate, arrest, detain, charge, and prosecute. The Agencies may develop discretionary policies specific to the laws they are charged with enforcing, the population they serve, and the problem they face. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may decide how to prioritize its resources in order to meet its stated enforcement goals that are set by the President. With executive unilateral powers the president, drafts policies without and sometimes over the objection of Congress or the courts. The President can design policies regarding the immigration matter without approval of Congress, he can simply follow the former presidents’ footsteps on immigration laws. I am making the argument that U.S. President does have too much unilateral power.
Furthermore, there is not enough consideration to whether the public is willing to accept the risk of not securing LPHC targets. Public opinion has the power to sway policy making. However, the department has two critical analytic challenges and the first is prioritizing resources most effectively to prepare and prevent the hazards. This includes natural and technological hazards. The very nature of terrorism is a difficult hazard to properly characterize. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security must develop policies that help at the community and general pubic levels. In developing policies at the general public level evacuation plans will be in place to avert much of the panic (Eller, Gerber
The Department of Homeland Security, also known as the DHS, is an orginization that is set in place to protect and secure the United States from the many threats, inside and outside of the country, that compromise the safety of our nation. With over two hundred and forty thousand employees, the Department of Homeland Security works in many different areas of the nation to keep the people safe and secure. They are largely focused on prepping for terrorist attacks and everything that would come with an attack on our nation. This focus on terrorism has caused considerable controversy and criticism, including many accusations of violating civil rights with this orginization.
The United States has numerous divisions, however the stand out that attempts to guarantee the wellbeing is the Executive Department of Homeland Security. Built up in 2002 by the Homeland Security Act, this division attempts to counteract, get ready, identify, react, and recoup from terrorist movement. Of the numerous individuals from the president's bureau, the Secretary of Homeland Security is the leader of the this division. The Department of Homeland Security's employment is to helps the fitting organizations with insight, gathering endeavors, and disseminating data. Alongside these employments, it additionally surveys, assesses and keep up government security techniques, and crisis reaction arranges (Mockaitis).
The defense, security, and safety American citizens enjoy each and every day is a result of dedicated professionals committed to Homeland Security and Homeland Defense. These broad initiatives require well-defined missions, organized and focused tasking, and finally, clearly understood duties, responsibilities, and operations. Organizations charged with these responsibilities must be better resourced than those of the enemy. Success in each of these objectives requires a well-organized infrastructure with clear mission sets. The afore mentioned areas of responsibility, related planning, and resource/personnel management are fluid (rightfully so) and are constantly reevaluated, restructured, and/or reinforced to best counterattack our Nation’s vulnerabilities before they become casualties.
Most significantly, Secretary Chertoff set forth how he would prioritize the Department 's focus, electing to concentrate first on threats "that pose catastrophic consequences" even if these targets are somewhat less vulnerable than other, but less consequential infrastructure. This analysis leads, for example, to the conclusion that we should focus preventive resources on areas of greater concern, like chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. And it leads as well to the conclusion that the Department of Homeland Security cannot and should not be expected to protect Americans from all possible risks.
The Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. is mandated to deal with terrorism problem that has a long history in the U.S. Terrorism has been a threat to U.S. security since the 1800. Terrorists continue to use powerful secret communication strategies and unexpected tools to achieve their intention in the U.S. soil. For example, the 9/11 terrorism attack that killed the highest number of American citizens in history succeeded because terrorist used hijacked passenger planes to perform the attack (Lutz and Lutz, 2013). Although the most notorious terrorism activity in the U.S. soil was performed by Islamic extremist, several other groups among them black militancy, anti-liberal, anti-government, Jewish extremist, fascist extremists, and Palestinian militancy among others have been reportedly caused a terrorist activity in the U.S. in the past and their continued existence still remain a major threat to the U.S. security (Lutz and Lutz, 2013). The counter-terrorism policy administered through the Bureau of Counterterrorism aims at partnering with local security agents, multilateral organizations, non-state actors and foreign governments to defeat local and global terrorism. The policy employs high level of coordinated strategies in securing international partnership to document and monitor and act appropriately to Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) as emerging organizations that coordinate international terrorist
What are the three directorates of the Department of Homeland Security? Describe the missions of each.
In this research paper, I am going to discuss the plan that the Department of Homeland Security has set forth for the years of 2012-2016. This plan outlines the entire vision of the department to essentially accomplish their missions and goals. The plan consists of missions varying from border security to cyber security. We must not forget the men and women on the front line working hard to ultimately secure and provide safety for the United States of America.
When conducting a homeland security assessment being thorough is of utmost importance. Organizations are multifaceted and as such, require examination in many different areas of day-to-day operations. Homeland security concerns are seemingly innumerable, with new threats emerging almost daily. For an organization to be effectively prepared to deal with these threats, everyone from the highest leadership to entry level employees must be involved in the organization’s homeland security initiatives (Fisher, n.d.). This is true of both public sector entities such as law enforcement agencies, as well as private sector corporations.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Risk Lexicon (2010) states that “risk is a key organizing principle for homeland security strategies, programs, efforts, and activities” (p. 1). This means that risk management is a decision making tool that allows for the DHS to intelligently and efficiently make planning choices based on threat level priorities. Some of the choices that are made using risk management are where to allocate both physical and financial resources, types of training initiatives for a specific threat, technological initiatives and strategic planning for risk mitigation and asset defense.
The Homeland Security enterprise is tasked with protecting our country from all threats to include threats that have not yet revealed themselves. There’s a few methods used to identify these threats, but I’m going to cover just one of those methods in particularly. To better explain the role of risk management, first I’ll break down the steps of risk management and explain each one individually. After I have fully addressed the basics of risk management, I’ll go more in depth on why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) utilizes this technique to prevent attacks in our homeland.
The ability of the Department of Homeland Security to effectively manage risk is vital to national security. Risk in general, is something that is permanent but because this is known, strategies can be used to mitigate situations as they present themselves. Government managers must manage risk in a complex environment taking into consideration the diverse missions and multiple objectives of public agencies (Hardy, 2014). The role of risk management within the homeland security enterprise was managed by best and worst case scenario planning. This is something that is inevitable as we are faced within a definite variety of threats. One way to grade or rank threats is through worst-case analysis. As this analysis can be used for worst-case scenarios the federal government cannot leave out lower ranking situations (Roberts, 2007). Since the Department of Homeland Security is charged with managing risk within the enterprise, a basic equation is used to help figure out different variables and how they would be affected.
The risk management plays an important role within the Homeland Security enterprise, because can help to organize the tasks and prepare better each organization to respond effectively in the event of terrorist attack or natural disaster (CRS 2007). Since the 9/11 terror attacks, preparation and response to terrorist attacks has changed thanks to the federal government’s attitude to distributing funds to states and local governments (CRS 2007). To better comprehend the current approach to each phase of the grant program development, it’s important to understand its origin (CRS 2007). While the nation was begin to understand the importance of homeland security, the development of the grant program and the risk management methodologies was happening at the same time (CRS