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PLCY should likewise do a complete inventory, analysis, and evaluation of any of the department’s work, in coordination with social media outlets, to censor or otherwise change or affect Americans’ speech. PLCY should comprehensively report on and publish this history in full so that the American people can know the facts. The department should remove all personnel who participated in any of this activity.

The department has significant authority and budget to provide grants for various purposes. This effort is diffused across components and lacks central policy thought and coordination. PLCY should set a departmentwide policy that establishes how granting choices are to be made and is consistent with the President’s priorities. PLCY should clear all granting decisions to ensure that they are consistent with the new policy.

PLCY-Wide Reforms. PLCY should work with Congress to streamline the department’s reporting requirements. Because there has not been a departmental reauthorization bill and these requirements have been added piecemeal over two decades, they significantly overlap and even conflict—wasting resources and distracting from the department’s mission. PLCY should seek the elimination of the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.

Issue-Area Reforms. PLCY should bolster its Immigration Statistics program and make it the one-stop shop for the timely production of all department immigration statistics and analysis.

OFFICE OF INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS (l&A)

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis should be eliminated both because it has not added value and because it has been weaponized for domestic political purposes.

The Intelligence Community (IC) already provides raw intelligence to DHS components. In addition, the FBI, National Counter Terrorism Center, and other agencies where necessary already provide holistic threat assessment products to federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as to private-sector entities at both the classified and unclassified levels where appropriate. I&A’s work as an interlocuter between the IC and DHS components’ individual intelligence operations on the one hand and government and the private sector on the other, as well as between the IC and the components, is at best duplicative. At worst, it is used and discussed in the mediaas a political tool, resulting in more harm than good to the U.S. government and IC writ large.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is not a member of the IC, should create cyber intelligence products in a collaborative fashion with the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. Such efforts would lead to timelier usable classified and unclassified products for stakeholders that exceed the quality and capability of I&A’s efforts. This same principle applies to other

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components as well: CBP, TSA, etc. all have their own intelligence operations and are better situated with their subject-matter experts to make their own assessments.

The National Operations Center (NOC) within the Office of Operations Coordination (OPS) should absorb those select I&A functions and tactically proficient personnel that need to be maintained (for example, technical support to the National Vetting Center). The remainder of I&A should be eliminated. The OPS entity should maintain IC status, and the only intelligence mission set should be to provide situational awareness and the dissemination of operational information or raw intelligence (no analysis or products) at classified and unclassified levels to executive leadership across the department, not outside of DHS.

OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL (OGC)

Needed Reforms

OGC should advise principals as to how DHS can execute its missions within the law instead of advising principals as to why they cannot execute regulations, policies, and programs.

Instead of each component’s chief counsel reporting to the Headquarters General Counsel (with a solid line) and indirectly to his or her component head (with a dotted line), the accountability should be reversed. Due to the different missions throughout the department, the components can better manage the legal issues of their specific mission than headquarters can. Thus, the chief counsel (or equivalent) of each component should report directly to the component head, report indirectly to the DHS General Counsel, and be accountable to the component head. The report to the General Counsel is to ensure consistency of advice across DHS.

OGC should hire significantly more Schedule C/political appointees who in turn supervise career staff and manage their output. DHS’s mission is politically charged, and the legal function cannot be allowed to thwart the Administration’s agenda by providing stilted or erroneous legal positions and decision-making.

OGC should serve as the center of the response to the legal challenges facing the department to ensure a streamlined, consistent response to a litany of issues facing the department. It is important to ensure consistency across all potential legal positions taken by the department, including those arising in litigation, congressional oversight, and inquiries received from the Inspector General, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and Congressional Research Service and pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

OGC should invest in e-discovery software and contract with a vendor to manage the department’s e-discovery. This would be beneficial both in litigation and in responding to congressional oversight. Removing delays in e-discovery processing would also reduce the issuance of subpoenas to the department and the generation of negative press for the Administration that comes from delayed responses.