Who’s in charge at DHS?

Who’s in charge at DHS? The Pentagon is not the only one who has questions raised about its use of outside contractors. At DHS, contract employees help write job descriptions for new headquarters workers; private contractors sign letters that officially offer employment; and they meet new government hires on their first day on the job. The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu writes that about the only thing they do not do, a critical new congressional audit concludes, is swear in DHS employees. Hsu writes that across several of DHS’s most troubled projects, including delayed programs to replace the Coast Guard’s fleet and to issue secure credentials to port workers, contractors are so enmeshed in DHS’s work that they oversee other contractors. Some are assigned work that involves awarding future business, setting policy or drawing up plans and reorganizations, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). “Plainly put, we need to know who is in charge at DHS — its managers and workers, or the contractors,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut). “This heavy reliance on contractors raises the risk that DHS is not creating the institutional knowledge needed to be able to judge whether contractors are performing as they should, and at a fair price.” Lieberman plans to hold a hearing on the report’s findings before the Senate homeland security committee today.