A Stitch in Haste

...is, perhaps ironically, its Chief Privacy Officer:

After a nine-month search, the Department of Homeland Security has appointed mid-level homeland security lawyer Hugo Teufel III, who has no formal experience in privacy compliance, to be the Chief Privacy Officer for Homeland Security.

While the Department interviewed prominent and experienced privacy officials both from the corporate world and within the government, Chertoff instead chose a loyalist lawyer with no real experience in the field of privacy policy.

Lovely.

As Wired notes, there is certainly a need for more attention to privacy matters within DHS agencies, most notably the Transportation Security Agency. But more to the point, how is it that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff — whose department is on double not-so-secret probation after Hurricane Katrina — be allowed to appoint yet another flunky to any position, let alone an important and high-profile one? Granted, Chertoff did not appoint Michael Brown to head FEMA (President Bush did). Nevertheless, the department as a whole has a taint that should not be ignored.

They just don't get it.

And is there any part of the government that needs to "just get it" more than Homeland Security?

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Meanwhile:

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department's formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement," according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

The two greatest obstacles to wise decision making are urgency and politics. Put the two together and "overcharges, wasteful spending, and mismanagement" are all but assured.