Report examines federal property security

In September, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that makes recommendations to the Interagency Security Committee (ISC) regarding the security of federal property. The ISC is an interagency organization led by the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for developing government-wide physical security standards and other coordinated efforts to protect federal facilities.

The report examines the practices used to identify and apply lessons learned and how agencies have utilized those practices. The report also looks at the actions the ISC has taken to identify and apply lessons learned from attacks on federal facilities, and examines challenges to developing a government-wide lessons learned process and strategies used by agencies to mitigate challenges.

During the course of this study, GAO interviewed a variety of security and law enforcement agencies that routinely attend to security concerns, including the Bureau of Diplomatic Security within the Department of State and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Through this study and previous research, GAO found eight practices that can be combined to form an overall lessons learned process. Law enforcement agencies cited many challenges to establishing a government-wide lessons learned process, including a lack of information sharing and resource constraints. GAO recommends that the ISC should incorporate the practices of a lessons learned process as it develops its own process, and that the ISC should determine if its existing authority is sufficient to implement a government-wide lessons learned process.

For more information about GAO-12-901, please follow the link below.
GAO-12-901, Federal Real Property Security: Interagency Security Committee Should Implement A Lessons-Learned Process