An Assessment of the Joint Requirements Council's (JRC) Organization and Staffing

The Joint Requirements Council (JRC) is an executive-level body in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged with building a unified, effective, and efficient operational requirements process for DHS. This report offers actions to improve the JRC's efficacy, effectiveness, and ability to plan for the future. In conducting this assessment, we undertook a multimethod approach based on the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities framework to examine four mission areas of the JRC: implementation and execution of the Joint Requirements Integration and Management System, provision of training to DHS staff on the requirements process, analysis of joint capabilities and requirements, and requirements outreach. To assess these areas, we reviewed literature on common problems facing complex organizations, examined literature on best practices from other joint requirements councils, and interviewed program staff. We find that the present organizational and personnel systems in place for the JRC should be expanded to more fully address the mission of the JRC and that the JRC staff authorizations are insufficient to accomplish all tasks across its mission areas. Additionally, JRC staff members face a high degree of uncertainty in their work given the decentralized nature of decisionmaking in the DHS requirements process. We offer two preliminary recommendations to DHS leadership. First, the JRC staffing level should be increased to accommodate workload across mission areas. Second, DHS leadership should vest more authority over DHS requirements to the JRC to facilitate the implementation of an enterprise-wide joint requirements process.