• One of the Department of Homeland Security's responsibilities is the Coast Guard.coast guard image by Studio Pookini from Fotolia.com
  
  After the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush established the Department of Homeland Security. He believed that creating a large organization whose job it was to protect the United States from another attack on its own shores would decrease the likelihood of another attack like 9/11. While it is true that another major attack has not occurred since then, as of October 2010, the organization does have coordination issues due to its complex structure.
  
  

Oversight Responsibilities

• The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for overseeing many branches. According to infrastructure analysis expert Laura H. Kahn, the Department of Homeland Security supervises the Coast Guard, Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), among many others. It also must hire, review the performances of and fire numerous directors, secretaries and undersecretaries. With this organization being so large and complex, it is difficult for many of the branches to communicate with one another.
  
  

Variation Among States

• According to Yale Professor Donald Kettl, it is this complex structure that makes it difficult for coordination among the states, as well as the cities and communities within those states. None of these bodies is willing to surrender enough of its autonomy to move the system as a whole forward. As a result, differing degrees of preparedness for an attack exist nationwide.
  
  

Communication Issues

• As Kettl points out, everyone agrees in principle to the idea that better communication is essential in the face of attack. In four states, officials have attempted to set up radio systems to foster communication between communities. The problem was that the communication equipment differed from one community to the next, and it was therefore difficult to communicate on the same radio channel between the different groups of people. Although he reports that the different states did plan such communication systems, the plans were not a success because they failed to take into account the smaller communities, and also because when officials did give first responders radio equipment, they sometimes forgot to turn it on.
  
  

Excessive Congressional Oversight

• Congress is responsible for the oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. Kahn says that this is problematic because of the fact that the department must answer to about 80 committees and subcommittees. This keeps DHS officials constantly in meetings with one of the numerous congressional committees, instead of doing the work of protecting the United States from another attack.