The Role of the Office of Homeland Security in the Federal Budget Process: Recommendations for Effective Long-Term Engagement

by Victoria A. Greenfield

How can the newly created Office of Homeland Security (OHS) engage effectively in the federal budget process? This report finds that OHS is uniquely poised to bring strategy and funding decisions together across departments and agencies via its presidential imprimatur. It also yields a road map with specific recommendations for OHS's budgetary role, highlighting the importance of establishing policy priorities and objectives early and formulating strategy and developing funding requests through a tightly coordinated interagency process.

37 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2002

About the author

Victoria Greenfield is a senior economist at RAND and a faculty affiliate with the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. She specializes in national security, transnational crime, and international socio-economic issues, advising government agencies on strategy and organizational design. Known for her interdisciplinary approach, she coauthored Assessing the Harms of Crime: A New Framework for Criminal Policy, published by Oxford University Press. Her work also covers topics such as human and drug trafficking, cyber risks to supply chains, and military economic metrics. Greenfield has held prominent roles at the U.S. Department of State, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the U.S. Naval Academy, and she has contributed to multiple National Academies committees. She earned her Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from UC Berkeley.