Government Homework – Two Assignments

Strategic Planning

The purpose of this assignment is to explore how national homeland security policy objectives and national strategy relate to effective homeland security strategic planning. You work for U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the department has just completed a major hiring initiative in your area. Now you have many new coworkers, and most of them know little about DHS’s mission and strategic planning for achieving homeland security strategic goals and objectives, both at the national and the departmental levels. To assist your coworkers in understanding these strategic issues, you have been directed to write an article for your organization’s employee newsletter. Using the resources provided below, as well information from resources you identify through your own research efforts, your assignment is to craft an article of 900–1,200 words that focuses on the instructions posed below. 

Assignment Guidelines

• Assumption: Your new coworkers know little about homeland security strategic planning efforts at both the DHS and national level.
• Address the following in 900–1,200 words:
• Assignment: Your assignment is to develop an article that provides succinct information appropriate for your audience on homeland security strategic planning, so that your coworkers better understand homeland security strategic planning efforts at both the DHS and national level. Your article should address the following:
• What is the current state of departmental–level DHS strategic planning?
• How well is the department’s strategic planning linked to DHS’s mission?
• How does the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) impacting the department’s long-range planning efforts?
• How has department-level homeland security strategic planning evolved since the department was formed?
• What are your thoughts on the future of homeland security strategic planning?
• Conclude your article with the 5 most significant concepts and ideas that you think your coworkers should remember after reading your article.
• Be sure to reference all sources using APA style.

Intelligence

Most people attribute the creation of law enforcement and intelligence fusion centers with the events of September 11, 2001. However, from 1999–2002, a series of major events primed policy makers within the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities to formalize cross-community information sharing activities and ultimately to create an effective law enforcement and intelligence information-sharing environment. 

As the new millennium was set to begin, Ahmed Ressam (the Millennium Bomber) was stopped as he exited a ferry crossing from Canada to a remote U.S. entry point. The contents found in his trunk would have allowed Ressam to achieve his goal of setting off an explosive device at the Los Angeles airport. This event, which occurred just two years before 9/11, led to meetings regarding the creation of some type of fusion and/or sharing process. Further discussions would advance this idea in the fall of 2002. In October of 2002, unprovoked shootings in the Washington DC metropolitan area resulted in 10 people dead and three critically injured. At the outset of these shootings, a massive police investigation across local and federal levels developed to apprehend the so-named Beltway Sniper. Local and federal law enforcement officials in the East attempted to fit the pieces together and analyze messages left by the killer or killers. This sniper case, combined with previous lessons learned, culminated in the realization for the need to formalize a multijurisdictional information-sharing activity. Members from across the law enforcement community—combining with elements of the homeland security, defense, and intelligence communities—set about institutionalizing this effort as quickly as possible.

Assignment Guidelines

• For this assignment, you are a member of the law enforcement community tasked with institutionalizing this effort.
• Address the following in 1,000–1,250 words:
• What are the challenges for federal, state, and local law enforcement in collecting intelligence information as it pertained to these two events? Explain.
• What lessons were learned from these events with regards to intelligence collection and information-sharing? Explain.
• What recommendations can you offer on how to create an information-sharing environment? Explain.
• How would your recommendation effectively formalize multijurisdictional information sharing to counter some of existing challenges? Explain.
• Be sure to reference all sources using APA style.