She and other investigators point to agencies such as the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, whose programme funding information had been accessible to the public before it became part of the homeland security apparatus. Now, they say, much of its budget has "gone black", or become classified, under the category of "continuity of government" -- how federal operations will continue in the event of a catastrophic attack.
Homeland security projects can also avoid public scrutiny under a procurement category known as "OTA," or "Other Transaction Authority", which critics say has been used to skirt the regulatory process. This designation, which Congress initially granted the Pentagon for "advanced research", has been used for projects that "generally are not subject to federal laws and regulations applicable to procurement contracts," according to a GAO report in 2002.
"A lot of Defense Department programmes need to be classified and provide limited knowledge. But classifying emergency preparedness? That's bull," one congressional official said. "There is no independent knowledge to make the right policy decisions."
Fusing the fiefdoms
The disparate projects and strategies undertaken at various levels of the US government can be attributed directly to inadequate communication at the federal level.
Random glitches are inevitable in the creation of a governmental behemoth that merges 22 federal agencies and 180,000 employees. But critics say problems within the Department of Homeland Security go well beyond internal integration, confounding the local officials and the technology companies expected to buy and sell equipment that is critical to national defence.
"Information sharing, or the lack of it, has been a big stumbling block," said Ray Bjorklund, senior vice-president and chief knowledge officer of Federal Sources Inc. (FSI), a consulting firm that specialises in government contracts. "It could be something as fundamental as land radio systems that can't talk to each other or, on the grander scale, the ability to exchange pieces of information that could help solve a crisis."
Communication problems persist even within the Department of Homeland Security itself, in no small part because of its labyrinthine structure.
Case in point: The department's top cybersecurity official is two levels removed from Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, a situation believed to have been responsible for the October resignation of Amit Yoran, who held the post over the past year. Lawmakers are trying to correct this organisational flaw with two House bills. Elsewhere in the agency, the chief information officer is not a member of the senior management team and does not have department-wide authority over technology assets and programmes.
