Normalizing Executive Department Boundaries: A Timely First Step to Improving Interagency Coordination

ISBN: 1288291132

Author: Meyer, David A

Condition: New

The lack of coordination between the executive departments of the United States government is impeding the nation's ability to fight the Global War on Terror. No solution to the problems facing the United States can be the exclusive responsibility of a single department and the departments do not appear able to synchronize their efforts. It is clear steps must be taken by the government to address this challenge. This problem is not new and several administrations have attempted to address the issue. These options ranged from reorganization of smaller agencies into a larger one, such as the case of the Department of Homeland Security, to simply reprioritizing the efforts of the departments relative to one another, such as in Presidential Decision Directive 56. In each case, these efforts met with failure because the proposals were either unacceptable within the culture of the affected organizations, unfeasible due to excessive costs of reorganization or new agencies, or unable be accomplished in a timely manner. Interagency coordination is too large a problem to be corrected by a single sweeping action. A smaller first step should be identified and this first step should be feasible, acceptable, and timely. The executive departments all have internal boundaries which subdivide the world into areas of responsibility. Particularly between the State and Defense departments, these boundaries differ widely between the different agencies. These differences can be traced to an internally focused evaluation of the requirements of the department, relative to itself, rather than an externally focused policy which seeks to maximize national resources in pursuit of stated policy. Normalizing those boundaries can be the efficient first step in addressing the larger problem or interagency coordination. Normalizing boundaries would reduce the total number of sub-departmental organization involved with developing policy for a given part of the world and would allow the members of