United States Federal Government: Restructuring Today for a Safer Tomorrow?

Discussion includes the more influential historical events that seem to demand the organizational restructuring of top law enforcement agencies which currently reside beneath the auspices of Department of Homeland Security. Some of which are the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 attack on New York’s World Trade Center and the war on Iraq. Identify the short term goal and long range goals and objectives. Discuss the potential for meeting these objectives. The impact each directorate is making in terms of privatizing some elements of government. The reasons why initial privatization shifted from a cost-based focus to a security-oriented plan, to information sharing among agencies all intended to further the cause of securing America. A brief discussion pertaining to the private sector service providers regarding the infrastructure and physical security and a look at some of the oversight tools used in respect to the actual delivery of services. A probe into the types of contracts being awarded and the locations of the resources which will be entrusted to the private vendors by the government. These resources being federal courts, airports, weapons testing facilities and military installations to name a few. We will consider the pros, cons, critics and supporters of the new American procurement process and evaluate the bidding process. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the oversight and identify some major issues currently making news in respect to the Department of Homeland Security spending. Primarily the failure to pay income taxes by these same service providers to the government who has hired them, the legal loopholes of subcontracting, and the failure of IT purchases and the lack of inventory for the assests the government currently owns. An investigation of the current reforms and the compliance issues which are adhered or ignored. In addition, the ideas which are now laws, in respect to improving investigative abilities for law enforcement must be addressed as these are set to expire at the year’s end. It seems safe to suggest it not worthwhile to rewrite the Constitution if the purpose is to exchange liberty for leadership lip service with no real chance of meeting the identified objectives. A common complaint in the United States is that lawmakers have tightened and restricted laws but these tougher laws apply only to its own citizens and terrorists remain on the outskirts of the legal system, if this is true how can government make the Homeland safer simply by information sharing and flexible investigative techniques? Will these work in the long and short term and outside of catastrophe, how will citizens know when the Country’s security has been breached?