MGMT

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) increased the number of Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) participants as well as the volume of cyber threat indicators it has shared since the program’s inception in 2016.  However, CISA made limited progress in improving the overall quality of information it shares with AIS participants to effectively reduce cyber threats and protect against attacks.  The lack of progress can be attributed to the limited number of AIS participants sharing cyber indicators with CISA, delays in receiving cyber threat intelligence standards, and insufficient staff.  To be more effective, CISA should hire the staff it needs to provide outreach, guidance, and training.  We made four recommendations to CISA to enhance the program’s overall effectiveness and cyber threat information sharing.  CISA concurred with all four recommendations.  

DHS has not fulfilled most of the 13 responsibilities of the Geospatial Data Act.  To comply with one responsibility, DHS has a Geospatial Information Officer and a dedicated Geospatial Management Office whose duties include overseeing the Act’s implementation and to coordinate with other agencies.  However, DHS has only partially met, or not met, the remaining 12 responsibilities in the Act.  DHS’ lack of progress in complying with the responsibilities outlined in the Act can be attributed to multiple external and internal factors.  External factors include the need for additional guidance from the Federal Geographic Data Committee and the Office of Management and Budget to properly interpret and implement certain responsibilities.  Internal factors include competing priorities that diverted resources away from fulfilling the Act’s 13 responsibilities.  We made three recommendations that focus on increasing the resources necessary to comply with DHS’ 13 responsibilities under the Act.  The Department concurred with all three recommendations.

Since 2017, DHS has continued to make progress in meeting its Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) reporting requirements, but challenges remain.  To enable more effective tracking of Federal spending, DHS must continue to take action to accurately align its budgetary data with the President’s budget, reduce award misalignments across DATA Act files, improve the timeliness of financial assistance reporting, implement and use government-wide data standards, and address risks to data quality.  Without these actions, DHS will continue to experience challenges in meeting its goal of achieving the highest possible data quality for submission to USAspending.gov.  We made five recommendations to help strengthen DHS’ controls for ensuring complete, accurate, and timely spending data.  The Department concurred with all five recommendations.