House passes several homeland security bills
The House passed eight bills last week that address the Homeland Security Department’s management and use of information and technology. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said he hopes the measures will appear in the House-Senate conference on the DHS authorization bill.
The bills would:
- Require DHS to use of open-source information to develop and disseminate open-source homeland security information products (H.R. 3815).
- Require DHS to work to prevent over-classification of information. (H.R. 4806).
- Promote the implementation of the Controlled Unclassified Information Framework (CUI) at DHS. The CUI framework was laid out in by President Bush in May. (H.R. 6193)
- Remove restrictions on how state and local authorities can spend DHS grants to support intelligence fusion centers. (H.R. 1694)
- Require each DHS component agency to have a privacy officer (H.R. 5170).
- Levy new requirements and give new authority to DHS’ chief information officer and require DHS to examine contractor security policies (H.R. 5983).
- Clarify the criteria for certain radiation detection monitors that are to be deployed by the Customs and Border Protection agency (H.R. 5531).
- Authorize a Coast Guard program to test the use of mobile biometric identification technology for use on people attempting to enter the country illegally (H.R. 2490).
About the Author
Ben Bain is a reporter for Federal Computer Week.