Washington – The ability to detect a biological attack quickly or even a naturally occurring outbreak of influenza is years behind schedule because of a lack of leadership by the Homeland Security Department, according to a new audit.
Although President Bush ordered the national surveillance program in 2004, the program “is falling short of its objectives,” wrote Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner.
Final plans for the system, designed to gather information from food, animal and air and water monitoring systems, as well as public health data, are still incomplete because it was shifted repeatedly within the department, and suffered from chronic short-staffing, the report found.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said that the problems were being addressed and that the system would be running by September 2008.
But critics were not mollified. “All of this was supposed to be fast-tracked,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “Yet we find ourselves, six years after 9/11, wrestling with basic challenges.”
