The agency the Secret Service works for

Albuquerque Journal - Today, the Department of Homeland Security is the third-largest agency in the federal government, behind only the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense.

When created in 2002, DHS merged 22 pre-existing federal agencies into one, marking the largest reorganization of the federal government in more than 50 years...

In the first year of its existence, the Department of Homeland Security employed 180,000 full-time workers. Today, 240,000 people collect paychecks from the agency, according to its website.

The department’s budget has more than doubled since the agency’s inception in 2003, when it spent $29 billion. This year, DHS is slated to spend $61 billion. The department’s spending request for 2015 is about $60 billion, a $1 billion reduction from current-year spending – and a nod to the constricted federal budget climate...

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service last year found that more than a decade after the Department of Homeland Security’s creation – and despite the specific language in the law that created it – the sprawling agency still didn’t have a clear definition for “homeland security,” or a strategy for integrating the divergent missions that are supposed to achieve it. The report suggested the uncertainty could actually be compromising national security.

“The U.S. government does not have a single definition for ‘homeland security,’ ” the report said. “Multiple definitions, missions and an absence of prioritization results in consequences to the nation’s security...There is no clarity in the national strategies of federal, state, and local roles and responsibilities; and, potentially, funding is driving priorities rather than priorities driving the funding.” ....

The ambiguity of purpose and growing budget and workforce at DHS prompted Ridge to question the overall direction of the agency he helped establish.

“Someone needs to explain to me how critical all these new people are to the nation,” Ridge said. “Are they getting so big they’re actually making work?”...

Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard Extension School, has called the Department of Homeland Security “a colossal and inefficient boondoggle.”

In a Journal interview, she said cultural problems at DHS are festering because of duplications of missions among agencies within the department, as well as a lack of top-level leadership.

“DHS was put together as one great big organized department, and in fact they’ve became one big disorganized group of stovepipes,” she said...

An Associated Press investigation from 2011 lends credence to Johnson-Freese’s assertion. The news service found that a 25-year, $24.2 billion overhaul initiated around the time of DHS’s inception and intended to add or upgrade more than 250 vessels to the Coast Guard’s aging fleet had produced just two new ships after more than $7 billion had been spent.

“I’ll be the first to admit, we weren’t prepared to start spending this money and supervising a project this big,” Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp told the news service.