Continuing the ongoing organizational and process changes initiated in April 2014 under his Unity of Effort initiative, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday said he has directed that the department’s research and development (R&D) activities be better unified through the use of Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) that cut across various agencies depending on requirements.
The unified R&D effort will be led by the Under Secretary for Science and Technology (S&T), which is Reginald Brothers, and include senior leaders of the department’s operating components.
The use of IPTs within the S&T Directorate is not new. During the administration of President George W. Bush, then S&T Under Secretary Cohen Jay Cohen stood up an IPT structure with cross agency involvement to meet specific development needs of particular agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But the use of the IPTs has seemed to wax and wane since.
Now at the behest of Johnson, it appears that DHS is attempting to institutionalize the use of the IPT structure with a new and improved version that looks across component requirements and solutions. In a statement, Johnson said the “IPTs will be charged with coordinating and prioritizing research and development across the department in a number of areas, such as aviation security, biological threats, counterterrorism, border security, cyber security and disaster resilience.”
But the new iteration of the IPTs is expected to go a step further. If there are requirements for R&D around checkpoints, then TSA, CBP and even the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at entrances and exits to federally-owned and leased facilities, would have representation on the IPT to ensure that checkpoint requirements across the department’s components are better understood and find commonality in potential solutions.
Johnson stated that “These IPTs will help our department better achieve a comprehensive understanding of all our research and development activities, and continue our move away from decisions made in stove pipes.”