Department Responsibilities: Maturing and Unifying the Department

Six years on since the Department's creation, our goal is simple: one DHS, one enterprise, a shared vision, with integrated results-based operations. Through a consolidated headquarters, we are bringing 35 locations together. We are implementing a series of wide-ranging efficiency initiatives that leverage the economies of scale in our Department in order to recover hundreds of millions of dollars and create a culture of responsibility and fiscal discipline.

Department Responsibilities
Unified DHS Activities & Programs

Consolidating Facilities

• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains $650 million to support construction of the Department's new headquarters at the St. Elizabeths campus, which will bring together components scattered geographically throughout the Washington, D.C. area.
• The Department has begun consolidating over 40 leases in the National Capital Region, saving taxpayers $163 million over the next 30 years.
• We launched a new effort to consolidate and secure the Department's information technology by fusing its previous 17 dispersed data centers into two Enterprise Centers to standardize IT procedures across the Department and improve information sharing.

Streamlining Operations

• In March, Secretary Napolitano launched a Department-wide efficiency review to trim costs, streamline operations, eliminate duplication, and better manage resources across the Department. This effort includes more than two dozen initiatives that will increase efficiency and save taxpayers millions of dollars.
• The Department launched the first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, a major Department-wide review to enhance inter-component communication and analysis and develop strategies to unify the Department’s policymaking.
• Secretary Napolitano issued an action directive requiring cross-component employee rotational and mentoring opportunities to increase the capacity of the the Department's workforce.

Transparency and Reform

• To ensure that all Department employees operate with the highest ethical standards, on her second day in office, Secretary Napolitano directed every incoming employee to receive a personal and comprehensive ethics briefing by the chief ethics officer.
• The Department launched www.dhs.gov/recovery to increase transparency about how Recovery Act funds are being spent.
• The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) revised internal policies to require classified sections of documents to be redacted to increase transparency and the dissemination of public information about TSA programs.