The Government Accountability Office’s homeland security division has gathered a number of its broad issue area reviews as a transition guide, covering topics like border security and transportation security. I’ve found that their work – essentially that of the two individuals I seem to encounter the most, Cathleen Berrick and Richard Stana – to be very fair and insightful. In particular, the GAO reports usually provide a reasonable view of DHS tries to balance the desire to fill security weaknesses with the pushback it gets from private industry, privacy think tanks, and foreign governments. It will be particularly interesting to see how Congressional Democrats – who have used GAO to identify areas where DHS has not been able to meet its own stated program goals or Congressionally-mandated legal requirements to tee up oversight hearings – manage GAO’s oversight of the department now that it will be under their own party’s control. You can find GAO’s compilation here.
Security Debrief is a blog dedicated to homeland security, terrorism and counter-terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement that provides context to the debates, policies and politics that are playing out in Washington, D.C.
