Going Beyond the Water's Edge: Improving Congressional Oversight for the Department of Homeland Security

Abstract

This thesis seeks to answer the question: How can Congress improve its oversight of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)? It is widely accepted that congressional oversight of DHS is, at best, not optimal. Currently, 108 committees and subcommittees have jurisdiction over DHS. To provide some perspective, the Department of Defense (DoD) falls under only 36, with more than 10 times the budget. The jurisdictional disparity between the committees and subcommittees is preventing Congress from providing efficient and effective oversight, which is negatively affecting DHS's ability to perform its function as the lead federal agency in homeland security. The desired end-state for this research project it to determine why Congress has failed to engage in reforms and determine what changes, if any, are feasible in improving congressional oversight of DHS.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA580228

Entities

People

  • Manuel Gonzalez

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Congress
  • Department Of Defense
  • Department Of Homeland Security
  • Foreign Relations
  • Governments
  • Health Care
  • Homeland Security
  • House Of Representatives
  • Intelligence Community (United States)
  • Law
  • National Governments
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • President (United States)
  • Public Administration
  • Security
  • United States Government

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Government and Public Administration Law.