The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) intelligence arm charged with coordinating intelligence sharing hasn’t fulfilled all of its oversight and collaboration requirements since it was founded more than a decade ago, a Federal watchdog said.
DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) is responsible for supporting DHS by accessing, receiving, and analyzing intelligence from various sources and for sharing data analysis across DHS and other agencies – including state and local governments and the private sector.
Since its inception in 2013, I&A has only met some of those responsibilities consistently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found, reporting on July 16 that the office failed to meet several of its strategic oversight activities and only partially addressed key collaboration practices.
I&A is specifically responsible for developing an annual consolidated budget proposal, yearly intelligence priorities framework, enterprise program reviews and evaluation reports, and intelligence training for enterprise staff.
“Although these have been policy requirements since 2013, GAO found that I&A has not consistently completed them due to a lack of leadership focus,” said GAO. “For example, I&A had not fulfilled its requirement to propose a consolidated budget for the Intelligence Enterprise until fiscal year 2025.”
“Developing and implementing procedures to develop a consolidated budget would help I&A complete this annual requirement,” the watchdog continued. “In turn, this would help ensure components are budgeting the necessary resources to share intelligence on threats.”
In addition to not meeting all four core responsibilities, I&A only addressed six of eight leading collaboration practices, according to GAO.
Inconsistencies from I&A include not always developing the Homeland Intelligence Priorities Framework, with past versions developed not consistently aligning with national priorities. It also did not annually report the results of its periodic intelligence program reviews until January 2025 – prior to that, reviews were informal and undocumented discussions.
Efforts to improve its training program required started in 2023 were not complete as of March 2025, and the agency hadn’t fully implemented a process for enterprise components to review information for accuracy when coordinating complete intelligence products.
Additionally, I&A had not addressed inconsistent designations of intelligence programs and did not update and complete its formal list of programs.
While I&A had not met all of its goals, GAO noted the agency had generally done well at leading the DHS intelligence community and has improved program reviews, frameworks, other documents, and efforts while addressing most leading collaboration practices.
Recommendations by GAO included establishing clear procedures and timelines for budgeting, setting intelligence priorities, conducting program reviews, finalizing a training strategy, coordinating intelligence products, and clarifying policies around component intelligence programs.
DHS agreed with all recommendations and committed to implementing them.