Preventing Waste, Fraud, Abuse, and Mismanagement in Homeland Security - A Gao High-Risk List Review

While the Department of Homeland Security's mission is critical, it is also critical that it keeps its finances in check because in order to protect the homeland we must maximize every dollar spent. Almost as soon as the Department's creation, the Government Accountability Office placed some of DHS's programs on its high-risk list, and today many remain. This list is developed every 2 years by watchdogs at GAO to identify areas in the Federal Government that are high-risk to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are in the most need of broad reform. It is intended to draw attention to these areas to force agency leaders to improve. Unfortunately some of the programs identified include some of the Department's core functions such as acquisitions, management, financial management, information technology, human capital and management integration, as well as multi-agency challenges such as information sharing and cybersecurity. While the Department has devoted time to addressing GAO's high-risk areas, these reports continue to show examples of programs ignoring best practices and putting taxpayer dollars at risk.