Department of Homeland Security: Science and Technology Directorate's Expenditure Plan

In recent years GAO and others have reported on problems in the financial management environment at the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T). S&T was established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to, among other things, coordinate the federal government's civilian efforts to identify and develop countermeasures to emerging terrorist threats to our nation. As DHS's primary research and development arm, the directorate is tasked with providing federal, state, local, and tribal officials with state-of-the-art technology and other resources, such as protocols and training procedures for use in responding to, and recovery from, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive attacks. S&T is led by an Under Secretary and has a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) who is responsible for all budgeting and accounting for financial resources. S&T receives funds for research, development, acquisition, and operations. It also receives funds for management and administration that support the operations of the directorate in both headquarters and the field, such as the expenditures for personnel compensation and benefits, travel, and rent. The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007 (Appropriations Act) provided about $973 million for S&T, of which about $838 million (about 86 percent) was for research, development, acquisition, and operations, and $135 million (about 14 percent) was for salaries and expenses of the Office of the Under Secretary and for management and administration of programs and activities. The Appropriations Act restricted S&T from obligating $60 million (about 44 percent) of the $135 million until the Secretary of Homeland Security prepared a fiscal year 2007 expenditure plan that was to be received and approved by the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and House of Representatives that (1) was broken down by program, project, and activity (PPA), (2) contained a detailed breakdown and justification of the management and administrative costs for each PPA, and (3) described the method utilized to develop the budget for administration costs in the budget requests for fiscal years 2006 and 2007. The Appropriations Act also required GAO to review the plan. In responding to this mandate, we assessed whether S&T's fiscal year 2007 expenditure plan satisfied the above conditions of the Appropriations Act. In April 2007, we briefed Congress on the preliminary results of our work. On May 9, 2007, Congress released the $60 million management and administration funding that had been restricted by the act.