Overall homeland strategy urged
Strategy would allow White House to define success and spearhead federal, state and local efforts, exec says
The federal government needs to create an overall strategy for homeland security to help the scores of federal, state and local organizations involved in the effort best use limited resources, said Robert Nabors, vice president for enterprise solutions in EDS' government division.
Speaking Jan. 17 at the West 2002 conference in San Diego, the retired Army major general said that projects are being funded without a coherent strategy. If that continues, in five years the United States will be more secure, but not as secure as it could — or should — be.
The Defense Department's National Military Strategy process can be an effective model, said Nabors, who most recently was commanding general and head of contracting for the Army's Communications-Electronics Command.
As part of that DOD exercise, President Bush and the administration's senior leadership lay out what they want to accomplish. Those concepts are then parsed into DOD strategies, such as the Defense Planning Guidance, which causes the services to align their projects with that national strategy.
The result is that at the end of five years, changes have been made to implement a national strategy, he said. It also enables DOD and service leadership to track how money is being spent and assess the success of projects as they relate to that overarching strategy.
A homeland security strategy would allow the administration to define success and spearhead federal, state and local efforts, Nabors said.
"An undefined action is a fool's quest," he said.
Furthermore, despite the large amounts of money being spent on homeland security, the funds are not unlimited. And only about $1.8 billion of the $40 billion allocated for homeland security will be spent on information technology, he said.
There is also limited time, Nabors said. Although the administration is riding a wave of support now, other issues will begin to trump homeland security and the war on terrorism. Therefore, the administration should seize the opportunity now to lay out a coherent strategy, he said.