QHSR Issues and requires a three-page analysis, addressing the following key analytical questions:
1. How have major programs and policies changed between the different Quadrennial Homeland Security Reviews (QHSRs)?
2. What changes in risk assessment do you find between the QHSRs? What is your assessment of these changes?
3. Based on current threat and overall security considerations at the present time, what specific areas of new emphasis, new polices and new programs should be itemized and prioritized in the next QHSR?
You may again follow the model of a CRS Report for Congress (cf. Lesson 9 paper assignment guidance), but as before, this is not required and creativity and critical thinking are encouraged.
Upload your paper to the drop box.
Guidance
This assignments requires you to:
• review Lesson 2, where you have already read passages from Quadrennial Homeland Security Reviews (QHSRs);
• consider what you learned and discussed in the subsequent lessons about the organization and mission space of the homeland security enterprise;
• integrate your knowledge into a comparative analysis of main risk assessment results and deriving homeland security goals of the so far published QHSR, using strategic thinking; and
• use critical thinking (based on your conclusions from and critique of lesson readings and discussions) to provide a futuristic assessment of what main aspects addressed in the next QHSR should be.
The original 9/11 act passed by Congress requires that DHS publish a QHSR every four years. So for published QHSRs are available here:
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Quadrennial Homeland Security Review
QHSRs will follow thereafter every four years. The 2014 QHSR identified current risk-informed priorities but also reaffirmed and updated the “five enduring missions of homeland security”—or homeland security core missions—from the 2010 QHSR:
Five Homeland Security Missions
• “Prevent Terrorism and Enhance Security”
• “Secure and Manage Our Borders”
• “Enforce and Administer our Immigration Laws”
• “Safeguard and Secure Cyberspace”
• “Strengthen National Preparedness and Resilience” in an all-hazards context
And, in addition, strengthen “the homeland security enterprise itself.” By this, the department means an effort to make DHS and its partner organizations more effective in carrying out their core missions.
Beyond these broad categories, the QHSR’s fundamental goal is to articulate a program and agenda for DHS over the next four years and into the future. The QHSR looks to do this by first identifying the major threats facing the country. Based on this assessment, it recommends steps DHS, its partner agencies, and the private sector should take to achieve the United States’ strategic homeland security objectives. In the 20104 QHSR, the following risk-informed strategic priorities were identified:
Risk-Informed Strategic Priorities
• “Securing Against the Evolving Terrorist Threat”
• “Safeguard and Secure Cyberspace”
• “A Homeland Security Strategy for Countering Biological Threats and Hazards”
• “Securing and Managing Flows of People and Goods”
• “Strengthening the Execution of Our Missions through Public-Private Partnerships”
Further, the second QHSR released in 2014 focused on two major issues in particular, “improving local capabilities in times of crisis along with emphasis on enhancing “community resilience,” or the ability of cities, towns, and neighborhoods to respond to terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and other perturbations. Local officials—like fire and police—along with citizens are the inevitable first responders in the event of a catastrophe. DHS clearly sees its role as enhancing the capacity of these first responders to act in major crises. Another DHS priority is greater federal support of state and local “fusion centers.” These entities emerged after 9/11; their aim is to increase cooperation among local and federal law enforcement and intelligence officials on issues like domestic terrorism. DHS supplies these offices, which now number 72 nationwide, with personnel possessing operational and intelligence skills in counterterrorism.
Critics have argued that DHS also needs to make better management of programs and streamlined administration part of its priorities for the future. However, the second QHSR signals the importance DHS seems to be placing on local preparedness and capacity. In both the first and second QHSR’s there was considerable emphasis on risk assessment which requires an exhaustive identification of key assets, their inherent vulnerability, adaptive protective measures aligned with those assets and strategies for enhanced security measures to reduce relative risk. The prime assumption is that better risk assessment would be applied in all future QHSRs.
Recommended food for thought towards this final assignment in your course is provided by the video “A Discussion of the 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review” on the page titled “Implications for DHS—The Future of the Department and the Enterprise” in this lesson.
https://www.csis.org/events/discussion-2014-quadrennial-homeland-security-review
