Reconstructing the Department of Homeland Security for the 22nd Century

The successful September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes made it glaringly obvious that the nation’s homeland security strategy which was being implemented by a large number of diverse and distant government agencies that were often entangled in their own missions was somehow not working effectively. Even the Senate and the House had a very large number of diverse committees and subcommittees concerned with homeland security and terrorism issues. Under the circumstances, the most appropriate response that the President could provide was to engineer a massive reorganisation of government in order to establish a new government agency, the Department of Homeland Security. This essay takes a look at some of the issues associated with the reorganisation of an efficient as well as effective Department of Homeland Security for the next century.