DHS Releases Groundbreaking Strategic Plan
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its first-ever Innovation, Research and Development (IRD) Strategic Plan.
The plan provides a blueprint for DHS IRD efforts over the next seven years (from FY 2024 to FY 2030), to ensure the department is properly using technology to address ever-changing threats to homeland security including border challenges, cyber threats, counterterrorism, and more.
“This visionary roadmap, informed by scientific efforts, will empower DHS and its components to reduce risks to the homeland through optimized innovation, research and development investments,” said DHS Under Secretary for science and technology Dimitri Kusnezov. “The technologies resulting from our IRD investments play a critical role in equipping the Department’s front-line operators with necessary tools to outpace our adversaries and enhance our preparedness and response capabilities.”
Strategic Priority Research Areas
The plan is broken down into eight strategic priority research areas (SRPAs) that DHS identified after conducting various analyses and workshops. This information “identifies where improvements are needed to stay ahead of the threats.”
· Advanced Sensing
· Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems
· Biotechnology
· Climate Change
· Communications and Networking
· Cybersecurity
· Data Integration, Analytics, Modeling, and Simulation
· Digital Identity and Trust
Digging into the details, the plan calls for investigating the use of enhanced biometric systems at ports of entry as well as using enhanced biometrics to catch fake passports and other travel documents.
On AI, the plan calls for using technology to effectively deploy AI to provide predictions, recommendations, and/or decisions, as well as working on ways to effectively handle adversarial AI. It follows President Biden’s 2023 Executive Order on AI.
DHS officials noted the need to stay nimble in their research, noting that technology effective today could easily be obsolete by 2030.
Collaboration
DHS said the plan was built with cooperation in mind, as cooperation across law enforcement and other entities is critical to building the best technology to protect the homeland.
“It was put together to not only internally coordinate and collaborate investments across the department, but also as a demand signal to our external partners within industry, international, interagency, and academia, to showcase the IRD needs through FY30. It really looks to collaborate, again, not only internally, but externally,” DHS Science & Technology Operations and Requirements Director Jon McEntee told Federal News Network.
Internal cooperation will be key as well to implementing some of the plans’ recommendations. DHS notes that it will require a “whole of government” approach.