010815as1

million in R&D work that went unreported to OMB, and was not coordinated by S&T; raising
concerns that there may have been duplication between those components’ work and other
public and private sector research. 647 GAO recommended that the Secretary identify a
Department-wide definition of R&D to avoid the potential for duplication. According to the
S&T Directorate’s 2014 Review, the Directorate has proposed a definition of R&D for the
Department, but it has yet to be approved. 648
The lack of transparency in the Department’s management of R&D spending creates a
risk of inefficiency. In order to select R&D projects that will be the most useful to DHS
components, S&T prioritizes those projects that receive “customer funding” or in-kind support
from those components. In other words, part of S&T’s R&D budget for its R&D activities
comes from reimbursements from other components. This model is helpful in reducing the
number of projects that will never succeed or will not be useful to operational components at
DHS, since operational components willingness to share in the cost of a project show their belief
in its potential utility and are more likely to convince S&T to engage on the project. However, it
also reduces transparency of R&D spending department-wide, transparency of S&T’s budget,
and transparency of spending on specific projects because in-kind support and outlays are not
reported to OMB, nor are they part of the S&T budget request made to Congress. 649
The Effectiveness of DHS’s R&D Spending Remains Unknown
Besides questions concerning the management and coordination of DHS’s research and
development projects, it remains unclear how much S&T and DHS’s other R&D projects are
improving the homeland security mission. The exact amount of R&D spending at DHS is
unclear, though it likely exceeds $1 billion annually. 650 Former Secretary Napolitano has also
647 Id.
648 Id.
649 Further complicating S&T’s budget and reducing transparency into specific projects, in FY2012 S&T realigned
its budget structure to place most of R&D activities into a single Project/Program/Activity (PPA), providing
Congress with less insight into and control over the Directorate’s R&D work than the previous budget structure,
which aligned R&D with specific topic areas. Despite objections by both the Senate and House Appropriations
Committees in 2012, the conference committee for the 2012 DHS Appropriations Act supported the realignment
and the practice continues to date. H. Rept. 112-331, p. 998; CRS R43064.
650 See John F. Sargent, Jr., Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2013, Congressional Research Service,
R42410, p. 19. CRS’s analysis showed $1.122 billion in DHS R&D budgetary authority for S&T, DNDO, and the
Coast Guard for FY 2011 and $984 million for FY 2012.; Government Accountability Office, Department of
Homeland Security: Oversight and Coordination of Research and Development Should be Strengthened, GAO-12-
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