Homeland Security: Guidance and Standards are Needed for Measuring the Effectiveness of Agencies' Facility Protection Efforts

摘要

The need to better protect federal facilities, coupled with federal budget constraints and the increased scrutiny of homeland security funding and programs, has prompted the need for U.S. agencies to measure the performance of their facility protection efforts. In this environment, it is important for these agencies to ensure that investments in facility protection are providing adequate returns in terms of better protecting real property assets against terrorism. In addition, the U.S. government's national strategy, Presidential directive, and guidance on protecting critical infrastructures--including facilities--have identified the use of performance measurement as a key means of assessing the effectiveness of protection programs. Given that protection of critical infrastructures is an important issue for organizations outside of the federal government as well, it is beneficial to look to the experiences of these organizations to identify lessons learned. As such, our objectives for this review were (1) to identify examples of performance measures for facility protection being used by selected organizations outside of the federal government--including private-sector entities, state and local governments, and foreign governments, and (2) to determine the status of U.S. federal agencies' efforts to develop and use performance measures as part of their facility protection programs.