Quadrennial Homeland Security Review

In February 2010, DHS issued its first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) report, outlining a strategic framework for homeland security to guide the activities of homeland security partners, including federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies; the private sector; and nongovernmental organizations.The report identified five homeland security missions: preventing terrorism and enhancing security; securing and managing our borders; enforcing and administering our immigration laws; safeguarding and securing cyberspace; and ensuring resilience to disasters, and goals and objectives to be achieved within each mission. The QHSR report also identified threats and challenges confronting U.S. homeland security, strategic objectives for strengthening the homeland security enterprise, and federal agencies' roles and responsibilities for homeland security. In addition to the QHSR report, in July 2010 DHS issued a report on the results of its Bottom- Up Review (BUR), a departmentwide assessment to align DHS's programmatic activities, such as investigating drug smuggling and inspecting cargo at ports of entry, and its organizational structure to the missions and goals identified in the QHSR. The BUR report described DHS's current activities within each of the five QHSR missions and two broad DHS functional areas that complement the homeland security mission, department management and accountability. The BUR report also identified priority initiatives to strengthen its activities. This report addresses the extent to which the QHSR and BUR reports addressed the reporting elements specified for the QHSR in the 9/11 Commission Act.