Good afternoon, and thank you Under Secretary Cohen for testifying at today’s hearing.

If I can take a quick moment before we get to today’s topic, I’d like to say a special thanks to you for making the time to come to my home state earlier this month for the first annual Rhode Island Defense and Oceanography Day.  The organizers and the attendees were so grateful for your participation, and I have heard from many people that your speech was a real highlight of the event.  So let me just add my personal thanks to you for being there. 

You have many admirers on this Committee, and we all want you to succeed in making the S&T Directorate the finest research, development, testing and evaluation organization in the Federal government.  A strategic plan is an extremely important document for any organization, but particularly a research and development organization like yours.  Sadly, I believe a lack of strategic planning contributed to the significant problems that plagued the S&T Directorate in previous years.

Although I believe the Under Secretary has been moving the S&T Directorate in the right direction, I am disappointed in the plan that we are here to discuss today.  I am disappointed for two reasons: first, this is not the strategic plan I expected to see.  And second, this plan is plagued by significant deficiencies.  The Homeland Security Act of 2002 required the Department to produce a national strategic plan for science and technology.  Despite repeated calls from Congress over the years, the Department still hasn’t released this plan.

What we have before us today is called the “S&T Strategic Plan.”  But this appears to have been submitted merely to satisfy report language in the FY 07 Appropriations bill.  This is not the national strategic plan that is five years overdue.  During consideration of the Homeland Security authorization bill this year, many of us again urged that DHS finish this plan.  And we included in the bill some additional measures for S&T to consider in developing the plan.  Those measures include plans to enhance the workforce; a methodology for prioritization and funding of research; and, most importantly, program performance measurements.  In other words, “metrics.”  The bipartisan coalition that worked on this measure believes that these are extremely important elements of a good strategic plan.  Yet the document before us lacks any sophisticated discussion of these issues.

Under Secretary Cohen, I am disappointed in these deficiencies.  I understand that you intend on submitting the “national strategic plan” to this Committee soon – and I hope it will come in the following weeks -- not months, and certainly not years.  But, in the meantime, the plan you have submitted lacks much of the substance necessary to make it an effective strategic document.  The plan before us might be described as a business or an organizational document.  But it is certainly not a strategic document.  Though you have described the organizational structure and roles and responsibilities of the organization, this document lacks a high-level strategy or vision for the S&T Directorate.

Your plan misses several critical areas.  Though the Committee specifically requested the inclusion of metrics, your plan does not discuss the use of metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of programs within S&T.  According to the Strategic Plan, metrics and measures are still under development.  The failure to include metrics raises questions about the Directorate’s ability to evaluate its own programs for effectiveness. Further, your plan does not describe how the Integrated Product Teams (IPT) process connects to a larger homeland security R&D strategy.  It does not explain how IPT topics are chosen or how IPTs will lead to the attainment of strategic, rather than tactical, goals.  Nor does this plan explain the origin of future-year budget estimates and prioritization decisions.  The plan contains no explanation for the prioritization of different Divisions, which makes it difficult to justify your “five year research and development” budget. 

I am curious why some Divisions are valued higher than others.  For instance, I’d like to know why the chem/bio division receives almost 35 percent of the entire budget, while the Command, Control, and Interoperability division receives less than 10 percent.  Your plan divides funding goals for basic research, innovation, transition, and other spending, but there is no clear explanation of how each program’s budget is being split to meet those percentage goals. Your plan also fails to clarify the distribution of performers of S&T Directorate research.  Though industry, government, and university interactions are briefly mentioned, it is not apparent from the Strategic Plan or the R&D Plan whether a strategic choice has been made about who will perform S&T R&D.  From my years of work on the Armed Services Committee, I can tell you that this plan pales in comparison to the Strategic Plans submitted by the Department of Defense.  DOD traces a clear path from concept to required capabilities, to goals and limitations, to possible technical solutions.  Yours does not.

Finally, your plan contains gaps between innovative capabilities and basic research activities.  DHS basic research funding may not be fully utilized if effective policies are not in place to transition them to technology development, and we have no way of assessing those policies because they have not been spelled out here. Though I am eager to discuss this in further detail, I will stop there.  I will not get into the “five year research and development budget” right now, but needless to say I’m troubled by some of the numbers I’m seeing in critical programs like cybersecurity.

Under Secretary Cohen, the Directorate is in better shape now than it was a year ago, and I applaud you and your team for that.  But this document should remind us all that there is still a long way to go.  I thank you for your time and your service, and look forward to continuing to work with you and your staff on these issues.