Improving Homeland Security takes a simple (set of) Pie Chart(s)
A Solution to a Measurable Problem
I believe our government and its constituents would like to see a regulation or legislative bill introduced (ok, and passed) that would require the Administration’s (and Congress and SOTU) individual departments to provide regular metrics based reports to both Congress and the public on their maturity of their internal converged security (cyber, physical, personnel, supply chain, etc.) and fraud programs. Each session (say, quarterly) these are updated (and auditable by IG/GAO) to show either progress or “two steps back”. We’re not talking about stats, actually metrics (think percentage) based on NIST and/or other industry resources.
Full disclosure, I wrote a book on this topic and wrote a chapter for Congress, so no need to start from scratch, just require them to start measuring and reporting. If you never use/reference/see my book, I’m okay with that. Just start, it will solve countless Homeland Security issues.
Just envision C-SPAN video of various congressional meetings, that large poster boards of say, simple Red/Green Pie Charts showing where a department/agency is or isn’t when it comes to various challenges in their converged security and fraud programs. This would have a major impact on moving federal government forward in a transparent approach when in comes to all areas of security, safety, fraud, waste, and abuse.
It would save money on FOIA requests, save money on meaningless statistic collection and but also show where congressional appropriations should be focused on (The Red to fix and The Green to sustain). This would flow over into accountability for existing funding (require metrics in all future bills) and accountability of leadership even “downward” into the government’s supply chain.
Hey’s let’s call it the Joint Interagency Maturing Security Act (humor intended). You never know … any legislative (local, state, federal, international) member wants to chat; you know where to find. me. Let’s make it simple and post some place easy to remember like SecurityMetrics[dot]gov for example. Get those big poster boards out that we see on C-SPAN behind the legislator desk and let us start moving the needle of government security improvements and thus homeland security.
Full Letter: Congress - Open Letter - A Scalable Homeland Security Solution - Ask McConnell