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Government Leader home > news stories
02/14/06
The real property risk to homeland security
By Ray Summerell
Special to Government Leader
Could homeland security be compromised by a basic lack of information about federal buildings and property? Unfortunately, it is quite possible.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 was issued in August 2004. The directive calls for a mandatory, governmentwide, common physical and information security standard for federal employees and contractors. Last fall, the Office of Management and Budget issued HSPD-12 implementation guidance to all executive agencies. The guidance reiterated HSPD-12’s goals: to “enhance security, increase government efficiency, reduce identity fraud and protect personal privacy.”
What stands in the way of compliance with this directive may surprise you. Simply put, there is no accurate inventory of property owned or leased by the federal government. Even more surprising, there is no call for such an inventory in either HSPD-12 or OMB’s implementation guidance.
Under the provisions of HSPD-12, by April 2006 the secretary of Commerce will set out a standard for “secure and reliable forms of identification.” The standard will be created with input from the secretaries of State, Defense and Homeland Security, the attorney general, and the directors of OMB and the White house Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Within four months of setting the standard, the heads of executive departments and agencies will be required to create programs to ensure compliance. Within eight months, identification that meets the standard will be required for physical access to federal facilities and logical access to federal IT systems. OMB will ensure compliance.
The seeming logical inconsistency in achieving compliance with HSPD-12 is that it focuses on the technological aspects of the identification system, despite a dearth of accurate knowledge about the physical infrastructure to which that system will be applied.
The technology exists to create a comprehensive physical security system. Unfortunately, without an inventory of property, the personnel employed there and their functions, the likelihood of vulnerability in such a system is high.
It is no small matter to develop that inventory. The federal government’s holdings are vast. By some calculations, the government owns or leases approximately 650 million acres and 3.5 billion square feet of building floor area. And to extrapolate from estimates first made by the Defense Department, as much as 25 percent of that inventory is unnecessary for successful fulfillment of agency missions.
True, some agencies have a better handle on their real property than others. Nonetheless, what is lacking is a common database of comprehensive real property information. Such a database is one of the most basic prerequisites for a security system meant to be implemented uniformly across all government agencies.
In particular, without a full understanding of facilities, demographics and responsibilities, the “graduated criteria” for secure access as called for in HSPD-12 is likely to be flawed, and the entire system vulnerable to exploitation.
Fortunately, the Bush administration and the House of Representatives are pushing federal executive agencies toward a better accounting of their real property assets. Through Executive Order 13327 (part of the President’s Management Agenda), the government will be required to get a better handle on its real property and human resources assets. HSPD-12 makes compliance with this order all the more important. And pilot legislation from the House of Representatives (HR 3134) provides a financial incentive for compliance with EO 13327 by returning some money from the sale of surplus property to the affected agencies rather than simply depositing it in the U.S. Treasury.
This will bring the government closer to understanding how its real property holdings affect physical security. And yet, most agencies have not reached even a “yellow” rating for compliance on the PMA. Many have actually slid backward to “red” because they have been unable to demonstrate how they will account for the use and condition of their real property.
For the common governmentwide physical and information security system called for by HSPD-12, agencies must work together. The linchpin for a successful security system is a shared pool of comprehensive information about real property holdings. Without it, you can never be completely confident that agencies have truly addressed this important homeland security requirement.
Ray Summerell is vice president of corporate development for VISTA Technology Services Inc. of Herndon, Va., a provider of real property asset management services to government. He can be reached at (703) 561-4064.
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