On the other hand, I expect a review to be the object of greater congressional oversight if it is mandated by law, as congressional authorization gives lawmakers a greater stake in a review. Cambridge University Press, ; Jeffrey W. To make these assessments, I reviewed a variety of primary sources, including agency reports, statements by agency officials, congressional hearing transcripts, and reports by government auditors; consulted relevant secondary sources, such as contemporaneous periodical articles and think tank reports; and interviewed policymakers and experts who are very knowledgeable about the reviews.
With all of these sources, I sought, in particular, to identify any information that shed light on whether the reviews led to changes in strategy, policy, management, or organization that might not have otherwise occurred and why the reviews did or did not have such effects. The policymaker interviews were particularly important in this regard because some government insiders are well equipped to assess whether a review led the government to do something differently. At the same time, such insiders often have biases or agendas that shape their responses to interview questions about issues in which they were involved.
To compen- sate for such biases or agendas, I interviewed at least a dozen people regarding each of the three reviews, including both officials who were directly involved in one of the reviews and officials and experts who were not directly involved in a review but are very knowledgeable about it. In all, I interviewed 32 people who worked on or observed a review while serving in the executive branch, 11 people who oversaw a review as a congressional official, and 8 nongovernmental experts on one of the re- views or agencies in question. Many of the interviews were conducted on a not-for-attribution basis to enable interviewees to speak more frankly.
To summarize my findings, I found that the first QHSR had little direct impact on homeland security policies and programs, but it gave leaders of the Department of Homeland Security DHS a useful framework for managing the department and modestly advanced departmental integra- tion. My investigation of the QDR furnished additional evidence that quadrennial reviews by agencies tend not to generate major changes in strategy, but they can be useful tools for leading and managing large bureaucracies. The core of the process consisted of seven study groups comprising some DHS officials from 42 DHS organizational units, which fed ideas to a steering committee led by Cohn.
However, many of the initiatives were vague. In addition to adding the immigration mission, the report went farther than preexisting statements by Napolitano or other DHS officials by out- lining goals and objectives for each mission, and the inclusive QHSR process helped build greater acknowledgment and acceptance of these missions across the department. Homeland security expert Ste- phen Flynn noted that this achievement was particularly important for DHS because, since its establishment, DHS units had defined their missions autonomously.
As an example, one DHS official noted that senior leaders did not know how much money was being spent department-wide on cybersecurity until the accounting reform was instituted. But such an effort would have angered DHS units whose activities did not rank highly, as well as lawmakers who care about those activities.
Maurer, hearing of the U. The legislative origins of the QHSR did give the congressional homeland security committees a stake in the review, and these committees held serious oversight hearings on the review when it was completed. Implementation therefore depended primarily on the DHS leadership, but Napolitano was not personally invested in the review and did not send a strong signal to DHS personnel that implementation was a high priority.
Since its creation, the DHS has been a highly fragmented and heterogeneous institution with weak central authority. Auerswald and Colton C.
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Cambridge Univer- sity Press, , —; and Peter J. Clinton saw a formal review as a useful means to advance these goals because she thought it might help overcome likely internal resistance to organizational reforms and signal to Congress and the White House that the State Department was well run and capable of spending money effec- tively. The final report, issued in December , was drafted principally by William Burke-White, a senior adviser to Slaughter in the Policy Planning Office.
Department of State and U. The department instituted all of these reorganizations within 15 months of the QDDR report. Current and former State Department officials said that most of the reorganizations would not have occurred without the QDDR because, absent the review, there would not have been an institutional vehicle to advance the ideas or to overcome resistance to them from powerful parts of the department. The earlier Office of the Coordina- tor for Reconstruction and Stabilization lacked the capacity or influence to carry out its stated mission of coordinating reconstruction and stabiliza- tion operations at the interagency level.
Making it a bureau gave them more clout. The QDDR recommended an array of reforms to place greater importance on innovation, risk taking, interagency experience, and skills other than traditional diplomacy in the hiring, training, and evalua- tion of State Department officials. For instance, candi- dates for the positions of chief or deputy chief of a U.
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In addition, the department has made changes to allow more officials to take temporary assignments in other agencies, established a pilot program to enable some Civil Service officers with specialized skills to take positions overseas that were previously reserved for Foreign Service officers, added to the Foreign Service exam a few questions designed to assess innovation and willingness to take risks, and created new Foreign Service training courses on interagency operations and public—private partnerships.
For instance, the American Foreign Service Association opposed making more substantial changes to the Foreign Service exam and opposed allowing Civil Service officers to be deployed overseas. During the review, there were sharp clashes among officials from different agencies and the White House regarding interagency roles. But after the report was issued, other agencies resisted transferring control over global health programs to USAID, and the administration abandoned the effort.
This proposal also had limited impact because State could not compel other agencies to take ambassadorial evaluations into account in their own personnel pro- cesses. Clinton can be said to have changed the State Department itself for the better. When the QDDR report was issued, Clinton charged Thomas Nides, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, with advancing implementation. Nides then tasked 19 State and USAID officials with advancing implementation in their areas of responsibility, and held periodic meetings with those officials to track progress. Department of State, 2 February , accessed at http: Clinton also asked Congress to enact legisla- tion that would mandate the QDDR and thereby ensure that her successors would conduct the exercise.
The prospect of gaining such resources or authorities became remote when the Republican Party gained control of the House of Representatives in November , with a goal of cutting federal spending sharply. Existing literature and interviews of experts and government officials reveal that the QDR has not been a major driver of overall defense strategy, but it has shaped some important narrower defense policy and organizational decisions. Defense scholars and experts generally have found the outcome of QDRs to be disappointing because the reviews have not led to major changes in defense strategy, in the size and shape of military forces, or in the allocation of resources among the military services.
Process, Policy, and Perspectives, th Cong. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps have each created separate QDR offices in order to advance their priorities and goals, which include the prevention of cuts to their budgets and the promotion of their programmatic preferences. Some secretaries and other senior officials have even expressed significant frustration with the QDR process.
In Brief: Assessing the January 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG)
For instance, in , William Cohen, who was secretary of defense during the QDR, told incoming secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld that the QDR was a juggernaut that he could not control. For instance, the Strategic Choices and Management Review involved more than a dozen working groups of defense officials.
My research further indicates that while secretaries of defense often find the QDR process to be cumbersome, the review can be a useful—if highly imperfect—vehicle for institutionalizing their priorities. Everyone is defending turf. But they are the best and perhaps only opportunity for the Secretary to put a lasting imprint on the defense program. Hamre, Rudy deLeon, and William J. Potomac Books, , — For instance, the QDR catalyzed the creation of 10 homeland response units with the mission of responding to a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack in the United States.
An official involved in the debate said that the QDR was a necessary vehicle for gaining approval of the new units: These initiatives included the establishment of the Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Elimination, which brings together personnel from across the military services to plan and train for missions to secure, disable, and destroy WMDs in hostile or semipermissive environments.
Strategic Command, news release, 6 February , accessed at http: This monograph analyzes the interconnections between the democratic institutionalization of the newly independent states of Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus, their political in stability, and economic development and prosperity. By introducing the concept of regime mimicry into the field of public administration, this monograph extends the epistemological frameworks of the democratization school to the phenomenon of political culture. Successes and failures of the democratic institutionalization processes in these countries largely depend on the ways their institutional actors reacted to internal and external disturbances of their domestic political, econmic, and cultural environments.
After Afghanistan by Antulio J. One of the key issues to be discussed at the forthcoming NATO summit will be preparation for future military engagements after more than a decade of counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan.
In Brief: Assessing the January Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) - Digital Library
Antulio J Echevarria II revisits some of the key lessons to be drawn from this experience, and highlights the questions that will need to be addressed if the Alliance is to be equipped to meet future challenges in a changing world. We will also examine how the electoral systems, politics, and outcomes, especially those of and , contributed to this sectarianization of identity.
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