Parceling Homeland Security R&D Funding

Barely a week after being sworn in as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on March 3, Michael Chertoff made the first of what will be many appearances before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. He was there to explain and defend a budget for his department that he had no role in preparing.

He quickly learned, as committee Chairwoman Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) warned him: "The honeymoon is over. ... No longer can we view [DHS] as a start-up operation that should not be held to the same standards of accountability and performance as other departments." And she applied those standards to the department's proposed fiscal 2006 budget of $41.1 billion, of which $1.4 billion is slotted for research and development.

She praised programs targeted for increased spending in the 2006 budget, naming the efforts to develop and deploy detectors for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons as one. But she also found "troubling" proposed cuts--30% in state homeland security grants and about 6% in other programs for first responders.

Collins' concerns about the cuts to states--especially a change to the formula for grants for police and firefighters that would seem to favor larger states--resonated with her fellow committee members. Supporting the saying that all politics is local, Chertoff heard from all the committee members present about their displeasure with the way the Administration proposes to disburse state grants, especially funding for first responders.

In defending the President's budget proposal, Chertoff stressed that priorities need to be established. "We have to put the resources where the highest threats are," he said. He also repeatedly emphasized that in the future, "our decision-making, our operational activities, and our spending will be grounded in risk-based management."

By risk based, Chertoff means "looking at threats, consequences, and vulnerabilities," not just at the size of the state or locality. One thing he would encourage in the grant-making process is shared services. "Not every community, for example, needs to have a 'hazmat' capability"--pooling resources and centralizing operations may be the most effective response, he said.

Under persistent questioning from several senators about what the cuts and formula change meant for their states, Chertoff again underlined his key point: "We need to be focused on risk, not on some cookie-cutter formula." Resources, he said, need to be deployed "in an analytically sound and transparent way." And to that mantra, he later added "disciplined." Then, in an attempt to head off further criticism, he noted that since Sept. 11, 2001, the department has distributed $14 billion to fund first responders.

THE ROAD to risk-based management begins with "a comprehensive review" of the department's organization, operations, and policies "to better understand what's working and what isn't," Chertoff said. As part of the review, which has already begun, "we will analyze the threats and define our mission and then seek to adapt the organization, operations, and policies to meet those threats and execute that mission--not the other way around."

Chertoff underscored the 7% increase in the department's budget over fiscal 2005. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) quickly undercut that point. In his opening statement, Lieberman said, "There are increases, but they are modest--only a 3 to 4% increase in DHS discretionary spending after inflation, and even that increase largely depends upon a controversial airline ticket fee that may or may not be approved by Congress."

Lieberman believes even a true 7% increase would not be sufficient to fund perceived "insecurity gaps." Among those gaps, he noted "the inability of first responders to communicate between agencies and jurisdictions ... a lack of preparedness for biological attack ... and inadequately defended train, railway, and highway transportation networks."

To begin to fill these holes, Lieberman, in a 32-page letter to the Senate Budget Committee, recommended an $8.4 billion increase in the governmentwide homeland security budget. DHS would receive $6.3 billion of that amount in addition to the $2.5 billion increase the President proposed for DHS in his fiscal 2006 budget. Lieberman noted that about half of the $6.3 billion "would go for training, equipment, and salaries for first responders," and a good portion of the $3-plus billion would be spent on the development and deployment of interoperable communications equipment.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) questioned Chertoff about deployment of radiation portal monitors at the nation's ports. This prompted Chertoff to expand on a new DHS initiative, the establishment of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. DNDO is charged with developing and deploying monitors to detect a nuclear explosive device or fissile or radiological material. This office, Chertoff explained, will pull in expertise from across the government to "create a mini-Manhattan Project to move to the next level technologically."

The President's budget request allocates $227 million to this interagency effort. Housed in DHS, DNDO will have representatives from the Department of Energy and of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and will coordinate with the Departments of Justice and of State, as well as the intelligence community. The office "will report to the secretary, which, I think, is indicative of the priority we place on this, although it will be tied very closely to the existing research we do at the Science & Technology Directorate," Chertoff said.

AT A SEMINAR on March 1 organized by the Washington Science Policy Alliance, Assistant DHS Secretary for Science & Technology Penrose C. (Parney) Albright discussed the goals for DNDO as well as funding for other R&D activities.

At $1.4 billion, up from $640 million in fiscal 2004, R&D "has actually experienced considerable growth" and reflects White House and congressional interest, Albright said. About 10% of the 2006 R&D budget is slotted for basic research, he said.

Albright admitted that it was difficult to decide how to allocate R&D funds. "How do I decide which is more important: nuclear or bio?" he asked. It's a judgment call, he answered, based on assessing risk and getting the most bang for the buck. "Most of the money is going into the major threats"--biological, nuclear, chemical, and explosives--"where we know that applying technology will have a significant benefit."

Albright marveled at the "nearly total lack of [congressional] earmarking over the past three years." That Congress has largely refrained from adding money to DHS's R&D budget for special projects has meant that DHS has been able to set its own research priorities. For fiscal 2006, these priorities include $362 million for biological countermeasures, $102 million for chemical countermeasures, $19 million for radiological and nuclear countermeasures, as well as nearly $15 million for explosives countermeasures.

The relatively paltry sum for explosives countermeasures is deceptive. The recent DHS reorganization--which moved most of the R&D functions of the various agencies that were consolidated to form the department into the Science & Technology Directorate--means that this research portfolio will acquire an additional $109 million from the Transportation Security Agency lab.

TSA's research has focused almost entirely on aviation security. That focus is going to be redirected, beginning with the 2006 budget. Albright said the explosives countermeasures effort will launch a long-range R&D program, at about $40 million to $50 million per year, to develop and deploy standoff detection for vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.

At $102 million, a hefty 92% increase over last year, the chemical countermeasures portfolio will focus primarily on developing detectors for those agents that are not of interest to the Pentagon but can still be lethal. About a fifth of this budget, $20 million, will be devoted to the development and deployment of sensors able to detect low-volatility agents that are missed by current detectors.

The Science & Technology Directorate will devote most of its research funds, $362 million, to countering a biological attack. This research is an interagency effort with the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), principally the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Nearly a third, or $109 million, of this R&D effort--dubbed Biowatch--is focused on surveillance detectors.

Over the past year-and-a-half, DHS has deployed Biowatch sensor systems in more than 30 cities and at major, high-profile events such as the two national political conventions. Using 2006 funds, DHS will focus on developing "the next, next generation" Biowatch sensors, Albright said.

ALMOST ALL of DNDO's budget is for R&D, Albright said. DNDO was created "to centralize radiological and nuclear detector development," he explained. All nondetector R&D remains in the radiological and nuclear countermeasures portfolio.

The University & Fellowship Program within the Science & Technology Directorate receives nearly $64 million in the fiscal 2006 budget to eventually support seven centers of excellence at universities and several hundred fellowships. For the first time, the 2006 budget sets aside funds to underwrite 20 postdoctoral fellowships.

Three centers of excellence have been funded at $5 million per year to conduct long-range interdisciplinary research on risk analysis, sociobehaviorial science, and agricultural security. A fourth center, to study high-consequence response and recovery to a terrorist attack, is soon to be opened. Those were obvious areas for study, but "it's not obvious what the next centers should be focused on," Albright said. "We're thinking about border/transportation areas and public policy/privacy issues," he said.

Also speaking at the seminar was Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget & Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Koizumi noted that in an era of tight budgets, the DHS R&D budget is growing, but at a slow rate.

Most homeland security R&D funding in the 2006 budget is actually being funneled to entities outside of DHS, Koizumi said, with "the largest R&D investment" going to HHS and most of that to biodefense research at NIAID. At $1.8 billion, NIAID actually receives more R&D funding than DHS.