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Creating the Department of Homeland Security: Consideration of the Administration's Proposal
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Mr. James McDonnell
INTRODUCTION Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Administration's
proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security, and specifically, the
critical infrastructure protection activities that will be assigned to the new
department. I am James F. McDonnell, Director of the Department of Energy Office
of Energy Assurance. I have been in
this position since December of 2001, working with the Office of the Secretary
to develop an integrated and streamlined management approach to protecting the
National Energy Infrastructure. The
Secretary of Energy has the responsibility as the lead federal agency to
coordinate protection activities in the Energy Sector. Presidential Decision
Directive 63 assigned this responsibility to DOE and the Secretary expects the
Homeland Security National Strategy to continue that assignment of
responsibility. The Office of
Energy Assurance was established at the Department to better protect against
severe energy disruptions in close collaboration with State and local
governments and the private sector and, where possible, to assist with emergency
response efforts. The Office provides technical expertise and
management oversight to identify energy system critical components and
interdependencies, identify threats to the system, recommend actions to correct
or mitigate vulnerabilities, plan for response and recovery to system
disruption, and provide technical response support during energy emergencies.
As originally conceived, the Office has four principle areas of
management, which are: Energy
Reliability The Office of Energy
Assurance coordinates Department of Energy policy development and
intergovernmental, interagency activities related to the protection and
reliability of the national energy infrastructure.
The Office will utilize longstanding relationships with government and
industry representatives to develop a national strategy for energy assurance and
establish a national tracking and reporting process to assess the ongoing
effectiveness of the national strategy, identifies shortfalls and develops
corrective action plans; and coordinates efforts to expand cooperation on
national energy infrastructure with friendly nations, international
organizations and multinational corporations. Energy Emergencies The Office of Energy Assurance ensures we are
prepared to support states and industry efforts to plan for, respond to and
mitigate actions that disrupt the nation's energy supplies.
This Office's primary missions are twofold; first is the identification
of potential threats to the national energy infrastructure, including natural
disasters and industrial accidents, and deliberate acts of terror, sabotage. The Office maintains an effective communications and
liaison network with the energy sector to facilitate information flow during
emergencies and communicate potential and actual threats to the appropriate
authorities. The second mission is to assist in the
development of federal energy emergency response plans.
In carrying out this function, OEA will provide technical and
professional assistance to states and industries for the development of local
and regional response plans and conduct readiness exercises with states and
industry to assist in identifying shortfalls prior to actual emergencies.
Following such exercises, the Office will compile lessons learned during
the conduct of emergencies and exercises for broad dissemination among relevant
industries and facilities. Energy
Infrastructure The Energy Assurance Team works with the
companies whose resources comprise the nation's energy sector to improve the
protection of critical energy facilities. The
Infrastructure Office works with the energy sector to introduce new security
practices into the energy sector. The
Office also interfaces with the DOE laboratory community to help identify and
speed commercialization of new technologies designed to enhance the protection
of sensitive facilities. Infrastructure
Interdependencies The Office of Energy Assurance had been
designated to provide federal oversight to the National Infrastructure
Simulation and Analysis Center as a collaborative effort between the National
Laboratories, the Office of Energy Assurance, and other federal agencies. The
NISAC, once fully operational, will provide a fundamentally new technical
planning and decision support environment for the analysis of critical
infrastructures, their interdependencies, vulnerabilities, and complexities for
policy analysis and emergency planning. NISAC
will use distributed information systems architectures to provide virtual
analysis capabilities that will accommodate a large number of providers and a
large number of users. Tasking for the NISAC will be developed through an
interagency planning process chaired by the Department's NISAC Administrator,
which includes representatives of the laboratories and industry and will ensure
the NISAC is truly a national asset meet national strategy. The
Department of Homeland Security The President's legislative proposal creating
the Department of Homeland Security includes moving the management of the
National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) and other
functions of the Office of Energy Assurance from DOE to DHS. The NISAC capability, once established, will
provide a unique tool for planning and decision-making. The complexities of the
physical and cyber interdependencies associated with the national energy
infrastructure are vast by themselves. Once those complexities are overlaid with
the other infrastructures, such as telecommunications, the interdependency
complexities rise to a level that they become an issue that must be addressed at
a national level. The transfer of the NISAC into the Department of Homeland
Security will ensure that requirements development and programmatic tasking for
NISAC meet national priorities. DOE is planning to transfer funding and two
staff members to DHS to provide program oversight for NISAC. DOE will continue
to be a customer of NISAC, seeking to utilize this national capability to
support Energy Sector analysis. The transfer of the NISAC administrative
functions with the Office of Energy Assurance into DHS will provide the new
Department with an integrated management structure to conduct activities
associated with protecting the National Energy Infrastructure.
The Office also manages a robust vulnerability assessment program that
utilizes expertise from the private sector and the National Laboratory complex,
plans for and supports restoration and recovery efforts following natural
disaster or acts of terrorism, assists states and industry in all aspects of
energy emergency planning and supports the development of strategic energy
policies. The new Department of Homeland Security will thus have the ability to
directly access the expertise located associated with the Office of Energy
Assurance and the national laboratories for assessments of the energy sector.
In addition, the new Homeland Security Centers for Excellence will
provide the Department with direct access to the capabilities currently resident
in the national laboratories for research and analysis in other areas of the
nation's critical infrastructure.
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