Risk Management as Strategic Change in National Homeland Security Policy
Abstract
Secretary Michael Chertoff has said that the core principle that animates the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is risk management. Risk management is a process of choosing trade-offs between available resources and the cost of minimizing the risk of unwanted consequences through an ongoing cycle of objective setting, risk assessment, alternatives evaluation, and implementation, in a way that buys down risk over time. The statements of national leaders, federal legislation, and the Department of Homeland Security s own strategy documents have set risk management as homeland security policy. Nonetheless, DHS has been challenged to implement a coordinated and integrated risk management program to include compatible risk assessment methodologies among its component agencies. The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), released in 2006, for the first time sets out a vision for a national risk management framework. That vision now extends the application of risk management to the nation s critical infrastructure owners and operators. This paper explores the challenges involved in implementing the risk management framework under the NIPP, examines how implementation has been managed as strategic change through the lens of change management theory, and offers recommendations for improvement. It is hoped this paper will motivate further study into homeland security strategic change.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA474338
Entities
People
- John P. Paczkowski
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School