Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff at the 2005 Excellence in Government Conference

Release Date: 07/25/05 00:00:00

Washington, D.C.
Excellence in Government Conference
July 25, 2005

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, thank you, Pat, for that introduction, and thank you for that musical introduction. I don't think I've ever actually gotten on the stage with a song being played. Maybe I'm going to start asking for that. Maybe we'll play the "Rocky" theme or -- I don't want to continue along that vein.

But it's a great pleasure to be here at this breakfast. I'm thrilled at the attendance here, because I think it really demonstrates the commitment of people here to seeing excellence in government. And I know the council has done a tremendous job as a partner for us at the Department of Homeland Security, providing a lot of useful recommendations about how we can be more efficient and achieve results, and I know you'll be working with us on citizen preparedness, which is a very, very big deal for us.

I think one of the lessons brought home by the events of the last two weeks is how we all as citizens need to be prepared to do -- take steps to participate in our own protection, and also if, God forbid, something happens, in a response to an emergency. And it's important that we think about those things in advance and not merely when we are actually in the middle of an event.

I would also like to thank Tim Clark and Government Executive Magazine, as well as the other organizations that are here today and the sponsors. And I appreciate having this opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts about DHS management and our philosophy as we move forward into the next two, three, four years of the early life of this brand new Department.

Obviously, the events in Egypt and in London this past week and on July 7th remind us again that terrorists continue to plot to take our lives and to destroy our way of life. Americans ought to be assured that we are doing everything possible to protect our country and our citizens, but, of course, as I've said, that is a joint responsibility. It's not one that's owned by the Department of Homeland Security, it's one that is shared by this Department with our state and local partners and with the private sector and indeed with each of us who are citizens here.

We remain today, as I speak, at Code Orange for mass transit, which is a reflection of the fact that we've had a couple of attacks. We know that traditionally al Qaeda does, as a tactical matter, and its sympathizers as a tactical matter, do seek to follow up attacks and have coordinated attacks. But I think I should emphasize here that our general state of preparedness has risen, and Code Yellow is now a more robust color than it was perhaps a year or two ago when we used to talk about being at that level of preparedness. And ultimately as we increase our baseline with respect to these codes, we will have a more secure country and we will be able to, in our day-to-day life, be able to contend with the kinds of threats that the events in London and in Egypt remind us continue to plague the civilized world.

So we encourage all Americans to be vigilant, to report suspicious activity to the authorities, to review their own emergency procedures in case something happens, but also to go about their lives enjoying the prosperity and the freedom that we have as Americans, and not allowing the terrorists to defeat us by defeating our spirit. Our spirit ultimately is the measure of our victory, and it is our courage and resilience, characteristics I know we share with the British people and with others in a civilized world, that will ensure the final triumph of decency in our globe.

September 11th did inaugurate a new model for how we manage the issue of homeland security, and Congress responded, under the leadership of President Bush, by bringing together 22 separate organizations which had responsibilities for dealing with the issue of homeland security. But the purpose of this was not merely to assemble 22 organizations in a single tent, it was to create a dynamic new organization that would integrate the strengths of all of its components through joint, coordinated and strategic action.

What are our guiding principles?  Well, first of all, we have to be results-oriented. We have to measure our success in terms of the outcomes we produce. We have to be network-focused, recognizing that in the 21st century, success in government is not a function of command and control, but it's a function of our ability to network with our partners in other government agencies and in the private sector. We have to be flexible and nimble with respect to change and adaptability, and we have to be focused on risk in how we manage our priorities.

And let me turn briefly to each of these and discuss them for a moment. First of all, let's talk about outcomes. The fact of the matter is that what matters to Americans in the area of homeland security is not our process but our outcome. Are we making people safer?  And we have to begin every day and end every day by asking questions like, Are we keeping bad people and bad things out of the country?  Are we doing what we need to do to harden and protect our infrastructure and our transportation?  Are we preparing ourselves to respond and recover if there should be an attack?

It doesn't matter whether each of us does his or her individual job if the result of that is not to produce a good outcome. All of us, when we carry out our individual assigned tasks, have to have ownership of the entire process, to see to it at the end of the day, all of these individual assignments fit together in an integrated way to produce a good outcome. And what we call that is being part of a team. And team building and the team approach is a very fundamental element of the philosophy that is driving the Department of Homeland Security.

So that means, for every single person, whether they're on the border as a Border Patrol agent, whether they're a scientist working on emerging technologies, whether they're an ICE agent going out to detect and apprehend absconders, whether they are infrastructure protection analysts looking to apply the lessons of intelligence to how we protect our infrastructure, every one of us has to be focused upon fundamental questions. Is what we are doing advancing the cause of prevention, protection, response and recovery?  All of us have to have a common picture of our mission and our goal, and must consider that what we do is not merely limited by our individual assignments, but by the need to make sure that we are always driving to that objective.

Networking. The federal government, as you all well know, does not own the transportation system in this country. We don't own the power grids or the cyber-systems. Most of these are in the hands of the private sector or, perhaps, in the hands of local and state agencies. So therefore, protecting this valuable infrastructure cannot be simply a matter of federal government dictating rules and regulations. Rather, protection has to flow from partnerships, partnerships at all level of government, partnerships with the private sector, private -- partnerships with our international partners overseas, and, of course, work with individual Americans.

Where DHS has a unique role is to provide leadership and to provide coordination; to disseminate best practices to those with whom we are working; to work to find emerging and cutting-edge technologies and technological systems, which will make the work of our partners easier; to develop and share intelligence and information across the board; and to create incentives to our partners to work as a coordinated network. Networking, which is very much the touchstone of organizations of the 21st century is therefore part of the very DNA of what makes this Department of Homeland Security.

What about flexibility?  Well, we know the enemy adapts rapidly to change. I mean, they are constantly morphing and responding to our actions overseas and changing their configuration and their way of carrying out their deadly missions. So we have to be able to match that. We have to be flexible with our own change to meet their evolving threat with our own evolving response. We need to be nimble and we need to be flexible as we survey the landscape, as we assess the changing threats, and as we adapt ourselves to meet those threats. Therefore, rigid structures and procedures cannot be the way we define our thinking. Instead, we have to build in our very culture an ability to change, even change urgently, as new threats develop, as new technologies develop, and as new infrastructure develops that we have an obligation to protect.

And finally, most important, how do we set our priorities, because we cannot protect every single person against every single threat at every moment and in every place. We have to, with our finite resources and our finite number of employees, we have to be able to focus ourselves on those priorities which most demand our attention. And that means we have to focus on risk. And what does that mean?  It means we look to consequence, it means we look to vulnerability, and it means we look to threat.

We do not want to have a fortress state. We do not want to be a security nation. We want to be a secure nation. And that means part of our assessment of priority and part of our assessment of risk always involves an element of balance. We want to balance the steps that we take to make sure we are optimizing the protection against risk, but with regard to things like our freedom, our privacy and our prosperity, because we will lose this war if we turn ourselves into a fortress. We will lose this war if we devalue those things which we hold dear in order to gain additional measures of protection. What we want to do is find that level of protection which addresses our greatest risks, but which allows us to do so in a way that is consistent with the values that everybody in this country holds very dear.

A lot of this means more effective use of resources, use of resources that complement rather than supplant what state, local and government and the private sector do. It also means targeting to those high-risk areas in a way that leverages our capabilities so that we get the maximum benefit for the public contribution to the effort of protecting ourselves.

And with these philosophical principles in mind, the ones I've spoken about, and particularly with regard to risk management, we've set about starting to make some changes in the Department of Homeland Security, which I think will reflect some of the lessons we've learned over the last couple of years, some of the emerging changes in the way the threat picture looks, and some of the best learning that we've acquired from dealing not only with experts inside government but experts outside government, with the council, and with people at a lot of different think tanks.

To do this, we inaugurated what we've called the Second Stage Review, which was an effort to look comprehensively across the Department at what our missions and outcomes are, what it is that we need to achieve, not from the vantage point of our individual organizational obligations, but standing back and looking at the whole picture, in terms of what our bottom-line results need to be.

And the teams we put together to conduct the Second Stage Review were deliberately drawn from different parts of the Department, the idea being we didn't only want to have people who were traditionally focused on a particular threat of sets or particular set of targets, looking at that set of threats or set of targets. We wanted to bring people with different disciplines together to encourage people to look outside of the traditional sets of thinking and be creative. In a sense, what we said was, if we gave you a clean sheet of paper, with no constraints other than common sense and the law, what would you suggest we do in order to accomplish our mission?  

And these teams, which included more than 250 people, did a phenomenal job of coming up with suggestions, some of which I announced in the last couple of weeks, some of which I will be announcing in the weeks and months to come. Many of them are very substantive; some of them are organizational. And I think among the imperatives we indicated would be very significant in setting our agenda in the next six months were the need to increase our focus on preparedness at all levels of government and private life; the obligation that we have to finally gain control of our borders and to do so in a way that is consistent with our traditional value of welcoming visitors and also fostering immigration that strengthens our country; protecting our transportation, which is what binds us together; further promoting information and intelligence sharing; building upon the management of the individual components to finally create a unified management that covers such important considerations as procurement policy that is efficient and has integrity; properly managed finances; and, of course, a fully integrated state-of-the-art information technology system.

In order to implement these various imperatives and others, we had to look at the structure and see, could we align the Department in a way that would further advance these objectives?  And it seemed to us we ought to do four things:  First of all, that we ought to finally build a unified intelligence function in the Department of Homeland Security with a Chief Intelligence Officer; second, that we ought to build a unified operations structure that can translate our intelligence into action; third, that we needed to have the capability to build policy across the Department and to plan that policy in a specific and integrated fashion, in a way that is more than simply assembling the policies of the individual components; and finally, that we needed to dedicate within one component all of our preparedness functions -- planning, training, exercising and grant-making, so that we could make sure they are operating in a comprehensive and unified manner and so that we could have accountability for the very difficult but very important challenge of making sure that we are prepared and that we are getting our partners prepared for dealing with the threats that are out there in the real world.

So with these structural changes in place and with the cooperation of Congress, which we are working with very closely to see that we can make these changes part of the law, we're looking forward now to setting the table for driving with a very ambitious and important agenda for the Department in the years to come.

This recognizes the very fine work done by our predecessors who stood up this Department basically from scratch, but also recognizing that we always stand to learn and to improve ourselves based upon the experiences that we have in the past.

What I promise you and what I promised the Department is that we will be forthright in what our views are and what our philosophy is; that we will acknowledge when we make mistakes and we will correct them; that when we are doing the right thing we'll stand up for that and we'll explain why we think we are doing the right thing; and that we're going to be blunt about the kind of discipline and the kind of risk focus, which I think the American people are entitled to expect from a Department that has the responsibility, with our partners, for homeland security.

As members of government and as leaders in your respective fields, you are very much a part of the network of which I have spoken. You've accepted the very high calling of public service, and you understand what it is and how important it is to work together to achieve a common objective. We appreciate your partnership and your contribution in the past. We look forward to building on that partnership and those contributions as we move forward in the future.

Ultimately, homeland security is all of our responsibilities, and it is a challenge that we can meet and a challenge that we can effectively address only if we work together. I know by your attendance and your participation here, you are committed to that goal, as are many, many others. I look forward to working with you, with the council, and with all of our other partners in seeing that we make this country safer and more secure while we maintain our freedom and our prosperity. Thank you very much.

I'll be delighted now to take some questions, and, of course, I have the lights glaring on me, so I may have to ask you to go up to the microphones. If you'd please tell me your name and your --

Question:  I was interested in your Second Stage Review after two years that we still have the CIO, the CFO, the Chief Procurement Officer buried underneath the Undersecretary of Management. And I was wondering if you could you explain your rationale behind that.

Secretary Chertoff:  I'd be delighted to. I knew one of the challenges when I came on board -- and, of course, I read a number of reports about the Department that had been written by a number of groups -- I knew one of the challenges was this issue of binding together our finance procurement and information technology functions. But I also know -- I think there were 29 direct reports to the Secretary when I came on board; I think our Second Stage Review slightly reduces that. And it seemed to me that simply creating more direct reports creates the illusion of coordination without necessarily the reality of coordination. So in order to make sure that we do operate on these very important management functions in a coordinated way, I think it was our determination, after looking at the issue in the review that we ought to keep these functions as part of the Undersecretary of Management's authority.

But I will tell you that in the way that I work with these officials, it is very much a hands-on and a leadership-focused effort. Both the Deputy and I often meet directly, for example, with the CFO or with the head of procurement because we're very interested in making sure that we drive changes in these very important management areas across the Department. And as we move forward, I envision that on a day-to-day basis, we will be meeting regularly not only with the Undersecretary for Management, but with the very important chiefs who operate these very important management functions.

So, again, recognizing that we have to balance a number of direct reports with the need to make sure we are driving Department priorities across the board, I think it was our judgment that a combination of hands-on management, but keeping the existing management structure, is probably the best way to strike the balance.

Question:  I have a question. I'm going to ask a question. You've been conducting a review for some time here, and I'm wondering how the staffing levels of the Department look to you. There's been complaints over the years about lack of staff in the Border Patrol and elsewhere. And just at a kind of macro level, or in the individual agencies, do we need more people?

Secretary Chertoff:  I think, generally, the recipe for carrying out an effective government activity involves not just people and not just technology and not just infrastructure, but the appropriate mix of all of these functions. Obviously we know there's a huge issue with the border and it's one that has gotten a great deal of attention, not only in Congress, but in the media and the public, as well, and I might say, by the President and by all of the members of the administration who are focused on the issue of the border. The appropriate way to address this I think is strategic. And again, this goes back to one of the reasons we wanted to have an undersecretary for policy who could really look at issues in terms of the entire system. And let me give you an example of what I mean.

When you look at the problem of illegal migration, it is not merely a question of how many boots you have on the ground at the border. It's how those boots interact with your technology and with your infrastructure to give you the maximum efficiency in terms of intercepting and deterring illegal border crossings. That means you've got to build an ability to develop an operational picture of what's going on on the ground; you've got to connect that in real time with your Border Patrol agents so that they are able to understand where they need to deploy themselves; you've got to build the roads and give them the equipment to get them there quickly. And then you've even got to go further -- you've got to say, well, when you apprehend people, what do you do with them. You've got to build the rest of an immigration system, and the rest of a border system, that deals with the issue of how you detain people, how you remove them back to their native countries, how you adjudicate their cases when they have cases that need to be adjudicated, and you have to make sure that you scale all of these functions up in a way so that you don't create a bottleneck.

It's like when you make a pipeline; if you expand one part of the pipeline, you better make sure the whole pipeline is scaled up. Otherwise you get a bottleneck and you break the pipeline.

So our philosophy with respect to the border and with respect to other things, as well, is we want to look at whole system. We want to analyze it strategically; we want to make sure that when we're adjusting in one area, we are taking account of that throughout the entire system. And it's that kind of capability that we're looking to develop in the Department with this unified policy and planning function.

Question:  Mr. Secretary, the appropriations bill now headed for the conference committee funds the Department based on its former organization, including elements that will be disassembled like Border Transportation, and omitting elements like the chief medical officer, that appear in the new organization. How can you shift these funding patterns from the old appropriations structure to the new organization of the Department?

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, we've been taught -- obviously we were mindful of this as we went through the process, and the schedule in terms of putting together a budget, of course, runs on a calendar that was not exactly synchronized with the calendar of bringing new leadership into the department. But we've been working closely with Congress to talk about how we might, once we get these organizational changes in place, either by administrative action or by legislative action -- how we might reprogram or make changes in the funding formula to address these issues.

I think Congress is obviously very focused on working on this with us. I think they also want to see that we have the most efficient Department and the most efficient use of resources possible. And this is a matter of active discussion as we speak.

Question:  Mr. Secretary, you spoke about the sharing of intelligence among the different components of the Department of Homeland Security, and that leads to the logical question about sharing of intelligence and information within the Department of Defense and with other entities of the intelligence community.

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, as you all know, of course, the Intelligence Reform Act and then the steps which the President has taken in the wake of the WMD Commission have been very significant in terms of binding the entire intelligence community together at a national level. We now have a Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador Negroponte, with whom I work very closely, as do the other department heads and agency heads who have some responsibility for intelligence within their components.

Part of my philosophy about Homeland Security as a player in the world of intelligence was, in order to make sure we have a full seat at the table we have to be effective contributors to the partnership. And so what we want to do is, first of all, make sure in our own collection of information and our own fusion of information we are doing the very best we can to make sure we're getting the job done. That gives us, I think, the optimal contribution to make to our partners in other agencies. And my experience in government, and my experience in all organizations, is the more you contribute, the more people want to contribute to you. So I view this as a very important element in our making sure we are properly configured and fitted to work with the rest of the intelligence community in carrying out the very important objective of making sure we are connecting all the dots.

Question:  Good morning, Mr. Secretary. MAX HR has been featured in a number of news stories recently. Could you comment briefly on the status of the implementation and also highlight some of the benefits for our guests today?

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, I think MAX HR is a tremendous opportunity to bring the issue of rewarding our employees into the kind of 21st century model which will both, I think, ultimately result in a better workplace and also make us more competitive in terms of recruiting. It reflects an assessment of what the current philosophy is in the private sector with respect to pay for performance, with respect to being competitive when you recruit people, and with respect to having a system for the people who work with me in this Department that recognizes achievement and encourages people to perform to their utmost.

Now, of course, it's important as we bring this system forward that we make sure supervisors are properly educated and trained in what it means to evaluate performance, because that will be an important role. We have to assure people that we're going to have adequate feedback, that there's going to be a system of making determinations that is fair and transparent. And, frankly, a big piece of this is making sure we move forward with this system in an efficient and speedy fashion.

One of the things we've requested of Congress in the appropriations process is to make sure that we are getting the full measure of what the President has requested in the budget for MAX HR, so we can continue to move forward and make sure those who are responsible for implementation will be properly trained and that we will actually be able to inaugurate this process in a way that is efficient and actually alleviates anxiety among the work force.

So I think there's a real opportunity here to build a 21st century Department and maybe a 21st century government across the board, but we need to make sure we're adequately supporting and funding this effort if we're going to make it a reality.

Ms.Ginnis:  I'm going to use the prerogative. I'm going to ask you a question, and then I have a really special gift for you. But my question is about critical infrastructure, which is -- 85 percent of which is owned by the private sector. That's a huge priority. The financial industry, securities industry really stepped up because they know the value of business continuity. In the other sectors, how are you going to find the right balance between voluntary standards and requirements that even they may feel they need to level the competitive playing field?

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, I think, Pat, you put your finger on what is the challenge as you look across infrastructure in this country. There are, obviously, first of all, substantial incentives that every business owner has to assure continuity of business and to protect the assets that someone has invested in, and that's, of course, something that in the first instance we always want to work with.

There are a series of market-based incentives that I think come into play. There are insurance incentives. I remember back in the days of Y2K, when that was coming up on us, there was a lot of focus on that, and the insurance companies were, among other players, very significant in raising the general level of preparedness -- that's an issue. I think that investment issues will become increasingly part of one of the market-based incentives for people to do what they have to do to protect infrastructure.

But I also think there are occasions when we need to look to regulation. Sometimes regulation does provide an important assurance for companies that want to do the right thing that they will not be at a competitive disadvantage. Everyone is always concerned about the possibility of a freeloader, somebody who doesn't make the appropriate investment on their own because they're counting on other people to do it for them. So we always want to make sure we don't have unintended consequences, which is all too often a function of regulation, but we want to make sure that where regulation is needed, we are working with the important stakeholders to make sure we're tailoring the regulation, that we are providing people with something that is essential, but not over-regulating. And I think some combination of the menu of ordinary self-interest, market-based incentives, and where necessary regulation will put us in the position as we move forward to get our general level of infrastructure protection raised to where it needs to be.

I would like to say, though, I do think a lot of businesses on their own recognize the importance of this. And some of the various trade councils have been working very hard to put together best practices and guidance for members of their own sector. We have, obviously, through our sector councils, a good working relationship with the various elements of the economy. I can tell you there are a huge number of business executives who give of their own time and work with us to see what we can do to make their sector of the economy more robust in terms of its protection and more robust in terms of its response and recovery capability, which is, of course, an important part of this whole process.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't pay particular tribute to the work of our Homeland Security Advisory Council and the various subcommittees. These are comprised of business leaders and people in various levels of government who come together and look at exactly this kind of question:  How do we make our infrastructure more secure, but do it in a way that doesn't compromise our efficiency and our prosperity?

Ms.Ginnis:  Thank you very much. Join me in thanking Secretary Chertoff.

I have a special gift for you, which I think you'll enjoy. This is a piece of red tape. This is the original Civil War red tape, which was cut to open up the documents -- and I guess that's where the phrase "cutting through the red tape" actually came from. This came from the Archives, and this is a reminder to you that you've got a job to do, cutting this red tape while securing the country.

Secretary Chertoff:  I have to say, Pat, that's probably one of the nicest gifts I've ever gotten as a speaker. When I think of all the people who have spoken to this organization, there must have been a lot of red tape back in the Civil War.

Ms.Ginnis:  We're going to have to cut that red tape --

Secretary Chertoff:  I'm sure we're still generating red tape, so probably in 200 years there will be someone standing up here and they'll be getting red tape from the 21st century. Hopefully, there will be a little bit less than there was back then. So we're doing our best.

###

This page was last modified on 07/25/05 00:00:00