Irony Alert: GSA recycles insane asylum as DHS HQ

St. Elizabeth's Campus in its Day

GSA Development of St. Elizabeths Campus

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is consolidating its headquarters in the National Capital Region (NCR) at St. Elizabeths Campus in the Anacostia neighborhood of southeast Washington, DC. The DHS's current facilities are spread among more than 40 buildings in the Washington, DC area. In an effort to provide a more unified, secure campus that brings together its executive leadership and operational management, DHS's new headquarters will allow for more efficient incident management response and command-and-control operations. The GSA proposes to develop a secure facility for DHS at St. Elizabeths, a National Historic Landmark (NHL) and former Government-run hospital for the insane. St. Elizabeth's is divided into two campuses, the West Campus and the East Campus. While DHS's headquarters will be housed on both, it will function as one unified campus.

St Elizabeth's HQ before reconstruction

Madness and Method at St. Elizabeths — Failed Architecture

Author Margaret McCormick
Summary - Washington D.C.’s next major addition is a department headquarters that challenges the city’s views on temporality, functionality and even irony. The site is a place of madness, method and the schemes in between; one the government both embraces and fears.

Washington D.C. is often used as a backdrop for tales of idiosyncratic power (Veep, House of Cards, Homeland, 24, Newsroom, The West Wing, just to name a few) and why not? The architecture’s symbolism and ideology can be matched only by the cynicism and suspicion these structures inspire. So therefore it seems somehow fitting that DC’s next major addition, the Headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will be perched on a hilltop just across the Anacostia River, physically and gesturally overseeing all before it.

Yet beyond maintaining constant visuals on the terrain, this headquarters represents a change in the city’s views on temporality, functionality and even irony. Because this is a space with a past, one it both embraces and fears.

DHS disjoint attitude about the new HQ

Reality Check Needed: Rising Costs and Delays in Construction of New DHS Headquarters at St. Elizabeths-Report.pdf

DHS CFO
Peggy Sherry

Janet Napolitano,
former DHS Secretary

Conclusion
The Committee is alarmed that DHS has not followed best practices and adequately prioritized headquarters consolidation. Although construction began at St. Elizabeths in 2009, former Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen noted in his testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security on February 13, 2013, “In the Washington Area the Department remains a disjointed collection of facilities and the future of the relocation to the St. Elizabeth’s campus remains in serious doubt.” In addition, comments from then-Secretaryof Homeland Security Janet Napolitano [since escaped to head the University of California] indicate that St. Elizabeths may no longer be the priority at DHS.

In discussing DHS appropriations for FY 2012, Secretary Janet Napolitano noted that she would “rather have the money to complete building a National Security Cutter for the Coast Guard and support the Secret Service in its activities, and sustain our efforts at the border than [have] a new building, and so that is why St. E’s is on the chopping block for now. I think that ultimately it will happen, but not now.” Secretary Napolitano’s remarks sparked a follow up statement from the Department’s Chief Financial Officer [Peggy Sherry, since escaped to IRS,] that DHS remains committed to the headquarters consolidation project and that it is still a priority.

The Committee is concerned that despite the Department’s statements otherwise,DHS has not been properly planning at St. Elizabeth’s and as a result the project has been mismanaged and squandered untold taxpayer dollars. With statements made by senior leadership, the morale concerns, the $1 billion cost increase, and slippage of the completion date to FY 2026, the Committee questions why there has not been amajor reassessment of the headquarters consolidation project now with a ten year extension tothe project’s deadline and why DHS has not considered a new approach to headquarters consolidation. Because of these concerns, Representative JeffDuncan, Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Oversightand Management Efficiency has requested GAO review the St. Elizabeth’s headquarters consolidation program. A copy of the Subcommittee Chair’s letter requesting GAO review the program can be found in this report’s appendix

‘Dysfunctional environment’

Top-level turnover makes it harder for DHS to stay on top of evolving threats - The Washington Post

During the Obama years, the outflow of personnel has accelerated, according to the FedScope database of federal employees maintained by the Office of Personnel Management. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of annual departures of permanent employees from DHS increased 31 percent, compared with a 17 percent increase for the government overall.

Members of the Senior Executive Service — the government’s top career managers — also are leaving DHS at a much higher rate. In 2013, SES departures were up 56 percent from the year before. By contrast, the rate for the government as a whole was virtually unchanged.

Chet Lunner, a former deputy undersecretary in the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, recalls the time a high-level colleague realized his phone number was wrong on his DHS business card. This was no small matter. The colleague was the person local officials were told to call with critical questions, such as whether someone police arrested had ties to terrorists. No one was calling.

The official asked administrators for new business cards, Lunner recounted. “They say, ‘You can’t have them. We have a policy that we only give out new business cards every 26 weeks.’ ’’

In small and not-so-small ways, some unique to DHS and others not, the department can be an infuriating, exhausting place to work, numerous former and current officials say. The frustrations reflect the fundamental wiring of the department, which was created by plucking 22 autonomous agencies from across the government and welding them into one.

Today, employees describe a stifling bureaucracy made up of agencies with clashing employee cultures and overtaxed by high-pressure responsibilities and relentless congressional carping. It can take many months to hire someone and weeks to get supplies as basic as a whiteboard.