WASHINGTON—Internal controversy over the Bush administration’s plan to protect wireless telecom networks and other critical infrastructure against terrorist threats and natural disasters broke open last week after a top Department of Homeland Security official and the agency’s Office of Inspector General publicly sparred over a highly critical report recently issued by the latter.
“The OIG report is erroneous,” Robert Stephan, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the DHS, told reporters after a meeting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last Tuesday.
The OIG report, issued last month, was harsh in it assessment of DHS efforts to identify and organize the country’s critical infrastructure in a national asset database. Earlier this month, the DHS released its National Infrastructure Protection Plan that builds on existing frameworks for critical infrastructure protection. Congress directed the DHS to develop the NIPP in 2002 when lawmakers passed the Homeland-Security Act. A key component of the NIPP is a risk-management framework that’s designed to be dynamic, constantly changing and improving.
The priority given to U.S. critical infrastructure protection is an outgrowth of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the disastrous emergency response to deadly hurricanes along the Gulf Coast last year. Indeed, the destructive storms of 2005 and the botched rescue/recovery efforts prompted the DHS to take a broad all-hazards approach to critical infrastructure protection rather than basing the plan only on potential terrorist threats.
Stephan said OIG investigators incorrectly stated raw data—as opposed to filtered data—was loaded into the national asset database. Stephan said neither he nor his top aides were interviewed for the report and that investigators lacked knowledge and backgrounds in the critical infrastructure field.
“This is just a ridiculous thing that happened,” said Stephan.
The DHS Office of Inspector General defended its report.
“Our team reviewed all relevant material and interviewed personnel that were deemed appropriate for this report. … Our staff are highly qualified and have the qualifications to review the department’s initiatives in this area,” stated a DHS inspector general spokeswoman in an e-mail to RCR Wireless News.
The OIG spokeswoman noted the report team consisted of inspectors and vice investigators. The investigators are law enforcement personnel who work in the OIG Office of Investigations. The spokeswoman declined to comment on Stephens’ claim that IG investigators rejected, or ignored, comments from the DHS assistant secretary’s low-level staff.
Meantime, INPUT, a Reston, Va., organization that specializes in government business, criticized the DHS NIPP. The group said the plan’s funding mechanism lacks clarity and calls on the private sector to turn over sensitive critical infrastructure information to the federal government.
“In the wake of recent large-scale data loss incidents at various federal departments and agencies, this will be a difficult request to make of industry vendors,” said INPUT in a press statement.
Stephan said information collected from the private sector would be guarded closely. He also said he expected DHS to issue final guidelines later this year on information sharing between government and the 17 critical infrastructure sectors. A total of 85 percent of critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, with foreign companies having significant stakes in some sectors.
The NIPP report said the private sector is concerned security-related information companies provide will expose them to competitive and/or legal scrutiny. The report stated some critical infrastructure sectors—for example, nuclear and chemical industries with significant oversight already—have been more forthcoming than others. “Entities in other sectors such as business and finance, the defense industrial base, and telecommunications have been less forthcoming due to concerns about sensitive information, despite the creation of the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information program,” stated the NIPP.
The DHS inspector general’s report may end up having more weight than usual in fashioning national critical infrastructure protection policy.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) recently won Senate approval of an amendment to a homeland security funding bill that could freeze DHS administrative and management travel until the agency implements the inspector general’s report.
“The inspector general’s report outlines a case of gross mismanagement within the Department of Homeland Security,” said Boxer. “It is absurd that at least 32,000 of the 77,000-plus assets in our National Asset Database are sites of no national significance. I would love to provide protection for every activity in America, but the reality is that we need to set priorities.”
