After atrophying and fading into disuse, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last summer resurrected the Joint Requirements Council (JRC) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with a more permanent structure built to last, according to department officials.
Unlike before, the JRC is now staffed with “real bodies sitting at headquarters,” with a charter and structure to maximize efficiencies and make “`prioritized investment recommendations and other recommendations concerning training and other organizational changes,” says Steve Truhlar, acting director of the JRC.
The JRC was re-established in June 2014 by Johnson and its charter was signed that November. The previous iteration of the JRC declined and fell away in the mid-2000s, in part due to DHS turning its attention to external events like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and it didn’t have a dedicated staff that would provide the “inertia” to keep it going, says Greg Pejic, principal director of DHS Unity of Effort Integration.
“We learned from that mistake,” Pejic says.
The DHS officials spoke as part of an Aug. 6 webinar presentation to provide an overview the JRC and the business management and process portions of Johnson’s April 2014 Unity of Effort initiative, which spawned the re-creation of the JRC.
The JRC reports its recommendations to another relatively new entity within DHS, the Deputies Management Action Group (DMAG), which meets every two weeks and has decision making authority. The DMAG is chaired by Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and consists of senior leadership of operational DHS components and other entities within the department.
The DMAG a more “in the weeds management forum,” where “folks come in with queued up decisions” for high level discussion and ultimately decision, Pejic says.
Other entities the report to the DMAG include the Acquisition Review Board, which oversees milestone decision events for DHS acquisition programs, and the Chief Financial Officer’s Council, which works on budgeting issues.
“We are trying to modify our resource allocation process…to more fully take advantage of the broad resources we have at headquarters and the operational components to help achieve the unity of effort, not just the mission management but in our budget development process” as well, Pejic says.
The “end state,” says Truhlar, is similar to the Defense Department’s acquisition model with “joint requirements overlapping with the resource allocation and the acquisition to get that prioritized investments in the middle, the sweet spots we want to be at.”
Ultimately is “all about getting the right tools into the hands of the front end operators so they can carry out their missions safely, effectively and efficiently with good stewardship of the funds that mange it,” says Truhlar. He adds that “You could say mission success starts with requirements. And when it comes to joint requirements obviously we’ve got some huge potential…across components.”
By putting a greater focus on building, analyzing, stabilizing, harmonizing and creating accurate requirements, the JRC can help the acquisition process become more successful and create economies of scale through larger purchases across components that also bring costs down, Truhlar says.
The Unity of Effort Integration being led by Pejic is also trying to foster ore of a “One DHS” culture. In 2014 Johnson, again through the Unity of Effort initiative, set the groundwork for a new approach to border security across the southern U.S. by creating several new Joint Task Forces. One of these task forces is led by a Coast Guard official, another by Customs and Border Protection, and a third by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Pejic says DHS headquarters itself wants to be a “melting bowl of best practices where when folks come up it really reflects a DHS culture not just salad bowl of cultures.”
DHS has had a poor track record with a number of important acquisition programs that ultimately were terminated at one stage or another in development or production. Two billion dollar programs where requirements generation, oversight and implementation were poorly managed were the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBINet) and the Cargo Advanced Automated Radiography System (CAARS).
In the case of SBINet, which was canceled by former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, requirements and acquisition were all done within CBP, albeit by different divisions. For CAARS, CBP Officers and other agency officials responsible for screening cargo at ports of entry generated the requirements but the management of the development and acquisition of the systems was done by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office within DHS.
In both the SBINet and CAARS cases, Border Patrol officials and CBP officers frequently complained that they were not part of regular consultations leading up to development, testing and production of the systems.
Truhlar says that the JRC process will also help determine whether a solution can be met by material or non-material means. If a policy change or a new type of training is the answer then that might be the way to go, he says.
“Affordable readiness is our watchword.” Truhlar says.