Managing the Mission at Homeland Security: A Conversation with Troy Edgar, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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Speaker C: See our 7 day return policy@carvana.com this paid program may the views of Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. Or Federal newsradio. Statements and opinions of this broadcast are solely those of individual contributors or advertisers. As indicated, Federal News Radio does not take responsibility for those statements or opinions and accepts no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy, errors or omissions reported during this program. This is the Business of Government Hour, a conversation about leadership and, uh, management with government executives and thought leaders who are truly changing the way government does business. Welcome to the Business of Government Hour. I'm Michael Keegan, your host and leadership fellow at the IBM center for the Business of Government. How do you lead a department like the U.S. department of Homeland Security, where the mission is urgent, complex, and always evolving? What does it take to bring DHS's many diverse missions under one strategic direction? How do you manage a $118 billion enterprise with more than 260,000 people while keeping focus, discipline and trust? And what lies ahead for Homeland Security in an increasingly complex world? Today, I'll explore these questions and so much more with my very special guest, Troy Edgar, Deputy secretary of the U.S. department of Homeland Security. Troy, welcome back. It's great to see you again.

Speaker B: Uh, it's good to see you again, Michael. How are you doing?

Speaker C: Oh, uh, great. How are you, sir?

Speaker B: Very good.

Speaker C: I'm so happy you took some time to talk with. As I was getting prepared for the show, I was thinking about your career. A Navy veteran, entrepreneur elected local, elected official, mayor, uh, time out in the private sector, uh, your first stint as cfo, when we had you in the last time we had you in at dhs, and now as Dep Sec at DHS Department of Homeland Security, you are the Chief Operating officer. I was just wondering, giving you a breadth of experience, Troy, um, how has it shaped the way you lead in such a complex environment like dhs?

Speaker B: Uh, well, thank you. Um, and again, very good to be here. You know, this, uh, being my second tour of duty at dhs and with everything that you said is kind of leading up to it. I think for me what, uh, is helpful is when I came into DHS at the very beginning, it was, um, learning federal government at scale. I've done a lot with large corporations and everything, uh, prior. But, um, and I think, you know, coming in now is a second time. Now I'm able to optimize what I see. And um, you know, the experience of um, you know, being in local government, when you're, you know, the kind of a mayor of a city, uh, you, you see how you can actually really make a difference. Um, and, you know, and in that vein, you know, two types of people, people that want to be somebody, ah, in their local city and somebody that wants to do something. And you know, for me, you know, was an ability to kind of give back while I was still a corporate guy. So, um, you know, and then as you kind of move through the different, uh, experiences on corporate, I think it just, um, you know, the type of work that I had done, being in over 40 Fortune 500 companies and going in, um, I tell people at DHS I'm the most comfortable going into a factory building or something. That's very complex because that was my background. You know, being able to understand, uh, how does something work. And everything comes down to a system and a process and being able to break that down and then using that model is the same way I used when I came into um, dhs.

Speaker C: You know, Troy, I really enjoyed your podcast. I also position you as a thought leader when it comes to leadership, because the meritocracy 88, I think you said 88 shows. And I mean, uh, what you did to position that the leaders that you had on very diverse in terms of experience. How did that time that you did those 88 shows, did any of that kind of come back to you and you kind of said, oh, I learned from this. I'm going to bring it to the department in your second run.

Speaker B: Uh, you know, a couple observations and, um, by the way, thank you again for bringing that up, is that, um, you know, uh, 88 shows. Um, the thing that I realized is there's a lot of effort that goes into really making sure that you make the most out of it. You know, people donate their time for an hour to sit down with you, and you want to make sure you get the most out of it. So we want to be prepared. Probably the benefit that I think, um, there was a couple of observations. I, uh, was at IBM when I was doing it. I was very grateful. You know, IBM allowed me to do that because I think, you know, there was probably 10 years ago, you know, when you're fully consuming as an executive in a company, they're not going to want you distracted from your job. And, you know, at that point I was able to be at a company that really did want you to get out and talk to people. And I thought, what a great way to do that. Something that's been interesting at DHS is now there's 88 episodes an hour long. And if you listen to those, you probably learn a lot about me. And I notice when I meet with people, um, in different countries or I meet with people within DHS or different agencies, people will do research and they'll listen to those episodes. And they were organized in a library type format. So you can pick an industry or you could pick a topic. And, um, so people, like, I notice, get prepared by meeting with me, by listening to some of the podcasts, and they'll refer to those going through. And it just kind of cuts down a little bit of the barrier so that when I'm meeting with people, they kind of understand, you know, how we would go about solving problems.

Speaker C: That's so true. It's a fascinating thing. I'm thinking about your time in the private sector. If we could piggybacking on that. How did that time, that stint you did in the private sector, working with government, being on the other side of the table, if you will, how did that help you with your second run leading such a complex department as DHS?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, you know, professionally, my experience, probably 75% of it was in the Fortune 500 in private industry. So, you know, out of the 40 companies that I was at and helping, I got to see commercially the best way. So when I go into government, I get to see DHS and learn everything. When I went and did my interim stint, I was able to now apply government to a lot of different agencies. So it made me pretty valuable being able to go into the VA or going into, you know, Intelligence or FBI or the army, because I knew a lot about government, I knew how it worked. Um, kind of coming now out of it again now I've been able to see a backstage tour of these different agencies. And now not only do I know the DHS and I know private industry, but I've been able to leverage the knowledge of, really when I deal with Paul Lawrence, who's my, um, commensurate colleague, the Deputy Secretary of va, who I've known for a while, him, um, and I have kind of a Kinship because we know we were starting from 30ft in and not at the very beginning. And so I think um, same applies. So it just gave me a different mindset and perspective of how to be able to different organizations and our agencies

Speaker C: work and similar path maybe. Paul was undersecretary at one point, you were CFO and then you did another stint and now he's deb saging. You're depseg. It makes sense that there's a synergy there. I'd love to talk to you about um, your perspective given the federal level and the type of leadership and public leadership in terms of the qualities that you need versus your time when you were mayor in California. How um, really what does local government or does it. Maybe it's a presumption to say this, but what does local government teach a leader about accountability and constituent services. And in your role right now, how does it help?

Speaker B: You know what I think the biggest thing, two things I learned uh, in local government, number one, um, a lot of people show up to the meetings and they're not prepared. And so preparation, if you are prepared and you know the process and you really feel strongly about Apollo policy, you win. So getting that type of mindset, I can apply that. You um, know people that work with me now in at DHS or in different interagency groups that I'm involved with know when I'm coming to the meeting, I'm prepared. Like I have read everything. I've got a frame of reference and a, and an opinion and I'm open minded and uh, realizing in local government even if you have an opinion, you're open minded, you may not have the votes. So you had to kind of, you know, keep very open minded and learn how to influence. The second thing that I learned in local government that I think is invaluable is when you're the mayor and you got a bunch of diversity on the council and nobody agrees, you are the main facilitator. So when you've got like at DHS, you know, 23 components and eight of them are operational and at any given time you're facilitating a very tough cross component discussion. Um, nobody is going to win everything. And so the mayor position allowed me to be able to work with everybody at the table, make sure everybody's heard. And then in the end, um, some people may win and some people may lose on an issue, but they were heard and they also had the ability, influence. If they didn't make their case, that's their responsibility. And so that was very helpful. For me, could we step back a bit?

Speaker C: Because maybe I was presumptuous in terms of. Can you tell us exactly what the role of the Deputy Secretary does and maybe even delve a little deeper in terms of being that arbiter? Um, with such a. I mean, was it 22 components?

Speaker B: Uh, 23.

Speaker C: 23 total.

Speaker B: But, um, yeah, the Deputy Secretary role, if you were to kind of equivocate it to industry, would be a chief Operating officer. So, um, you know, probably one of the important things of that role, if you look at it at the highest level, the president wins an election on a campaign platform, and he or she hires a secretary and selects them, nominates them. Um, and my job is to take that campaign platform and that strategy of policy direction from the secretary and basically operationalize it and execute. So I'm the execution arm. Um, there's no doubt that the component leads own the executions of their area, but across the entire enterprise, what my role is is to help them in resourcing, looking at the way that they're going through. You, uh, know, I always say my responsibility is to look at the system that's in place. And that would mean looking at the people that are there, the processes that are there, the accountability and the measures, being able to make sure that all those pieces are in place and that, you know, we're just not doing stuff to do it, we're doing it to actually achieve an objective for the President.

Speaker C: So, you know, just as an aside, so DHS is, as you just noted, is one of the most operational complex departments. I mean, you have in the federal government, you have border Enforcement, immigration services, Customs, cybersecurity, the Secret Service, Coast Guard, fema. We could go on. Um, how do you maintain sort of that coherence and mission alignment across all those components that really do have a distinct culture, authorities and stakeholders. How do you do that?

Speaker B: Um, well, I think you said a key word there, which is authorities. If you looked at our administration when we came in, we came in with the power of DOGE behind us and we were going to redo government. Um, and that was a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I feel very blessed that I had the opportunity to be there. But as the deputy, what you also need to realize is that the Congress gave us that money, and our job is to navigate that money with the context of what was the President's agenda, what's the Secretary actually want to accomplish, and what are we legally required to do because the Congress gave us that money with direction. Um, and so my job is A lot, uh, really trying to go back to what are we actually opting authorized to do and legally need to do. And so that process, you know, when you also got different people as component leads, they come in and, you know, we all got to make sure that we're aligned behind the Secretary's direction, you know, and going through that. So I think, you know, being able to meet at dhs, I think, uh, a most important part of DHS is people. You know, we talk about all the money and everything that's associated with the, you know, all the operational missions. But the reality is it's a lot about relationships. And I've, uh, probably spent a lot of my time maintaining the relationships between the secretary, myself, between myself and the White House, myself and my counterparts in different agencies. Uh, and then probably the most important is myself and the components, um, and making sure that I don't get into their swim lane. At the end of the day, they're accountable for their area. And if they, you know, look, you can be a deputy that just observes and watches and doesn't do anything and stays out of the way and hopefully everybody's cool or you really, when you start to see a, uh, problem in the system and you need to get involved, my job is really to maintain that system. And if I'm always fixing problems, I'm going to be always fixing problems. So when I'm not fixing them, I'm actually trying to make sure that the system is in place across the organization to execute. And that really would be a sign of me doing a successful job at the operational side.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's important to see. I was thinking of. You mentioned the budget. I was wondering if you could give us a peek into that in terms of your role. You went from cfo, now you're currently the coo, if you will. So what goes into. Because the pie is not ever expanding. I think 100 billion is what we're looking at.

Speaker B: Maybe, uh, FY27 is 118.

Speaker C: So how do you go about resource allocation? Can you give us a peek into that?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, again, I won't go too technical into the budget, but I would just say for everybody that kind of looks in federal government and whenever you hear that we're having budget issues. But imagine at any given time, the department's really managing three budgets. They're managing the budget they're in right now. They're managing a budget that's coming up, and then they're planning through a longer range process to get ready for the President's next Budget with interactions with OMB and uh, so it's three dimensional chess. What you're really trying to do is you want to make sure in the current year that you're not setting expectations on things you can't afford for the rest of uh, the next three to five years. And if you do make short term decision resource allocations, you know, obviously you've got the pressure of the Secretary that's got things that, you know, Secretary Mullen would want to accomplish. So we need to do that, but we need to make sure we're not creating a sustainability issue longer term. Um, so, um, and I would just say probably the other thing on the resource and the budgeting is we're at a historic time for dhs. And think about this for a second, Michael. Our budget that the Secretary and I will be on the hill Talking through FY27, the President's budget, and with the Hill, um, we're in 26 right now. Our current budget is 118 million. Uh, and that's net or the gross budget, 118 billion. I'm sorry, we got 190 billion this year in reconciliation money under the Working Families Tax Reduction act or the big beautiful bill. And then we just got 70 billion for CBP and ICE to fund through FY29. So if you think about it, uh, you know, one of the big things for this just in this last year is not only was we were we going through $113 billion of a budget, but uh, uh, on top of that, 190 billion to kind of do some very specific things. So you know, if you think about it, you Compare that budget, 113 billion, American Airlines is 65 billion a year. So you know, and they're like a Fortune 65 company, you know. So when you look at this, the scale of this and being able to kind of go through from resource allocation, um, pretty incredible, you know, with that

Speaker C: money comes accountability concerns. I was just wondering if you could share maybe at a high level, but what does accountability look like in dhs? And how do you measure whether a component, um, is performing at that level that you and the Secretary would like? What do you do if you don't,

Speaker B: ah, a couple different, uh, things that you look at from an accountability perspective is, um, you know, first of all, federal government, especially when you get a budget that big, it could be really easy to make it complex. So a little bit of my job is to help provide clarity. So you go to the things at the highest level that mean the most. And what would mean the most in the executive branch. The president ran on a campaign and he made commitments in his platform that need to be accomplished. So if we get down into micromanaging to the outcomes, um, at super low level, the president could have his four years and not achieve, achieve his goals. So we don't want to be the arbiter of a bunch of things that don't mean anything at the highest level, which equate to the people that voted. So the president, from my perspective, there was really three or four main things at the highest level that we really need to kind of keep our eye on. The prize, number one was to seal the border, which we did fairly quickly. Second was to the deportation agenda. Uh, the third would probably be kind of a efficient government. And that would be what we probably did a lot of what we did with the first six months within Doge. And then how can you be sustainable? And then I think the optimization, uh, for would be some of the measures that you're talking about. So that takes you from the president to the secretary. And then I think, you know, when you start looking at below that, I think traditionally a lot of the government agencies focus on budget performance. So something that I really struggled with, being a corporate, private industry type guy and coming into this is people would determine success by, quote, spending your whole budget. And um, yeah, so that's absolutely not this administration's perspective. It's like, take it back to what our authorities, make sure that you're achieving the objectives of what the money was there for and make sure that you are efficient. And if not, you know, it's not bad to give the money back to the treasury, you know. And so when I think what we've really tried to do from a taxpayer perspective is be responsible. The measures itself, I think, you know, are pretty straightforward if you keep it simple. Like, for example, CBP, they were given $46 billion in the big beautiful bill to build the wall, the whole southwest border, 1900 miles across the southwest border. CBP will be evaluated in total. Did they get 19, 20 miles closed? What was open to be built? What do they need to achieve? Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually to be on track? And is the president have his promontory point moment? You know, when the east and west, uh, railroads came together and they put in the golden spike and said we're done. Is the president going to be able to say while he's still here in office, not, not when he's out of office, you know, in 29th January when it's over. But, you know, so it's stuff like that. Keep everybody focused on the prize at the highest level and then look at some of the sub measures and how much miles was done and, and I would say you could use that for every. There's three or four big things that each one of the components are responsible for, um, that we really need to keep an eye on. And that's really what a big part of my job is.

Speaker C: What does it take to bring DHS's many diverse missions under one strategic direction? We'll explore this question and so much more when our conversation continues on the Business of Government Hour.

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Speaker C: Welcome back to the Business of Government Hour. I'm Michael Keegan, your host and our guest today is Troy Edgar, Deputy secretary at the U.S. department of Homeland Security. From your perspective, and, uh, with the Secretary's vision following the administration, how has the department sought to sort of structure its internal operations? And really what I'm getting at is how to maintain an enforcement level, an intensity that is required, but also make sure it's operationally disciplined and the workforce doesn't get too exhausted, if you will. How do you balance all these?

Speaker B: Again, I'll go back and just kind of reiterate the model. So since you're using, you know, enforcement. So if we were talking about the border, we would be looking at, you know, we've sealed the border, are people coming across, and we're almost at a zero there. So there's not a lot of measures there. But enforcement would be something that we would look at an, uh, organization like ice, who would be responsible? You know, ICE has two components or subcomponents in it, the removals part and the investigations part. And the investigations are really focused on counterterrorism, narco cross national issues. We're doing a lot of interagency stuff. Um, both in the country, they have transnational, they have international authorities. And then the removals part is the enforcement that you're talking about. And then with enforcements, you go back to, what did the president guarantee the people in their process and he was going through? And numbers that you hear, there's 10 to 15 million people that crossed illegally during the last administration. So is that correct? And if so, let's look at it as a funnel of, okay, how many folks are we able to go and evaluate? Are we going to focus on the worst of the worst and of the worst of the worst to keep with campaign promise? What is then the denominator? So from that you start to set up reasonable again, it's just like I said with the wall. You then break it up to, okay, what would that mean? And not to establish quotas or marks, but to establish measures as baselines to compare how your organ is operating towards the end goal. In the example of enforcement, we would look at statistics from a daily basis and we'd say, hey, look, are we on. And the big beautiful bill, for example, we modeled that and said with the number of officers that we have doing enforcement and removals, we possibly wouldn't be able to get to the number that we see in the denominator that we would need to achieve. And so the big beautiful Bill actually added 10,000 border enforcement people. So it wasn't to try to get people to do more and exhaust them. My job is to evaluate the resource requirements and make sure that I'm transmitting the potential requirements to Congress. I'm transmitting not me personally, but me as an organization, the Secretary OMB their director as a team to the Hill and say, look, to be able to meet the President's agenda, these are the types of resources we would need. And then once given to us, then I get the other side of that responsibility with the ICE director to hire 10,000. And so again, not the sexy side of the hardcore work that happens in the mission, in the field directly, but the support function of recruiting, vetting, training, onboarding, all that. And that is the area that you've got to kind of find that middle ground or, uh, that regression line that's the most deepest, to provide the best results.

Speaker C: Uh, we talked about A lot of the operational leadership I'd like to talk about, maybe homeland security threats, and they've grown more complex, Troy. And whether we're talking about fentanyl trafficking, transnational organizational crimes, cyber threats and near peer adversaries, I'm wondering if you could share with us to the level you can. How is DHS prioritizing and sequencing its response across this threat landscape? What are some of the ways you think about the threats?

Speaker B: Um, a couple different ways, I guess. Um, you know, first of all, you, uh, can have a laundry list. It would be pretty big of the different types of threats. And what our administration has done is kind of put them into some big buckets. So one of the ways to facilitate priorities across governments or across the agencies, like between dhs, Department of Justice, Department of War, um, CIA or Intel side, all of that would be, um, executive orders. So the President's able, really through the White House coordination, to put their perspective in an executive order. And a lot of people go, well, that's not a budget document, that's not authority. But it definitely sets a priority for the secretaries and the deputies to kind of do stuff. So that would be a mechanism. Once you decide what the priorities are, once you get to the operational side, I would just use your example that, like transnational crime, you know, DHS is the largest police force in the nation. So if you added up all of the officers that we have in cbp, Border Patrol, uh, within ice, between hsi, ero, um, even different components, wherever there would be law enforcement, um, we broke this up into different missions. So for counterterrorism, um, we set up, um, a lot of the different types of activities. We would set up task, ah, force or different groups. So one of the areas like Homeland, um, Security Task Force or HSTF really is something where this administration, uh, is able to kind of coordinate around these problems that go from the Department of Justice to DHS and everywhere in between. And we're able to use this organization of this HSTF and really break down the walls and reconstitute law enforcement to be the total of government. So one thing that you would see with this administration is we have set up these cross groups. I mean, look at, for example, dhs, what we did with having CBP and ICE working together. You would never see those two groups ever working together as one law enforcement agency. But, you know, you've seen probably in the last year and a half where you see a combined group where, you know, Trump won or M. You know, when I was here, you know, in the first administration, the. Even within ICE there was like ERO and hsi, and those two were kind of separated. Now we look at it as like total law enforcement. We have a tremendous amount of capability. If you combine us with the Department of Justice and Department of War, you really have a super effective way. Lastly, I think it's all on risk management. As it comes down to, you know, we have a process that we evaluate where the risks are. And, uh, even though we have resources and everything, it's been really a big focus for this administration. Back to relationships of my relationship with Department of War, my relationship with justice, my relationship with the intel community. I spend a lot of time making sure that we have those seams put together.

Speaker C: I don't want to pick. We've talked about a couple. You've hinted at a couple of the components. I wanted to switch gears and talk about maybe the Coast Guard for a minute. And you've received some attention under your leadership. I believe this is correct. Commissioning a new fast response cutters and maybe the Arctic presence. Troy, how do you think, um, about the Coast Guard's priority mission evolving to date? And maybe perhaps I'm thinking the Arctic, and I'm thinking in the context of near peer competition, how are you setting it up for success?

Speaker B: Um, when I was the chief financial officer again through the first administration, something that I noticed about the Coast Guard is a pretty significant readiness hole. And what I mean by that is, um, if you think about the Coast Guard, it's the white ships that can go into any port because nobody feels that there's danger because they're just the Coast Guard. And so I think in, you know, our administration, probably the last one too, the Coast Guard's ability to. And their scope started kind of going out over and above what they were actually had, uh, the authorities to do. And so one of the things that I noticed in the first administration is that because they kept pushing out and always saying yes, they weren't getting the resources from Congress to backfill their readiness. When I say readiness, I'm saying ships need spare parts, uh, ships need backfit ports where then they go into port. They can get all the shops and stuff that are needed to support. Um, they need maintenance, they need buildings, they need to outfit ports that had been adrift for a very long time and started to become a really significant problem. Something that's happened, um, we talked about the big beautiful bill and the Coast Guard is, I think, think what has happened is everybody's recognizing the importance of the Coast Guard and they've noticed the lack of funding. And so right now one of the biggest things that we got going, this is really significant, uh, uh, information is the coast guard got $25 billion in the big beautiful bill of the 190 I was talking about earlier to recapitalize the Coast Guard. So the Coast Guard's missions are definitely going. But like when you talked about the fast response cutters I commissioned, actually the Arctic, uh, polar cutters, um, up in Alask, Alaska, um, we're also realizing that in the Arctic is really, with everything starting to kind of, um, melt up there and it's becoming a very viable shipping route and our adversaries are absolutely ahead of us. So one of the focuses with President Trump and with Secretary Mullen has been to recapitalize and really focus on the Arctic for the Coast Guard and making sure that significant amount of economic area of opportunity and maritime, uh, uh, capability and prosperity up there is that, that we need to catch up. And so you will see a big portion of our focus being to readdress the Arctic and making sure that we are making the investments not only in the ships, but the ports, the housing for the Coast Guard folks that are up there.

Speaker C: You know, I was wondering about internally, um, organizationally in DHS and whether it's workforce reductions or contract reviews or restructuring across the management directorate, uh, how have you, during your tenure reformed the department organizationally and more importantly, how do you do it without really disrupting the critical mission you're on the hook for?

Speaker B: Um, a little bit back to what we were talking about with authorities. Um, when we look at reform, if you go through different areas of reform and the reform hasn't improved the system or the process, then you need to reevaluate and figure out whether that reform was right. Um, you know, and there's different types of reform. Cost reduction is not necessarily to make the process better, it's to make, you know, it's to try to figure out if we could make it more affordable to the taxpayers and still meet the mission requirements that Congress had set out. Looking at the different areas that we did at the very beginning of the administration, you know, Doge came in and was really looking for a low lying fruit. And what we were trying to do is to set up a scenario where we would look through each of the components, go back to their authorities and take them back to what they should be focused on. For example, like cisa. Um, you know, there was a lot of focus on CISA, uh, the cyber and infrastructure group that really owns the.govum domain within the government and, uh, has a lot of different responsibilities. But, you know, were they doing the things that they should be doing and is it consistent with the president's, um, you know, campaign promises and where we're at? So you can't just start cutting stuff randomly. Um, we have to kind of go through, lay out, okay, what is the objectives, what are the authorities, what are we trying to achieve, and then being able to kind of make sure there's also processes in place that if you do major reorganizations, you do have to notify Congress. So we've got to be careful that if we're going past the threshold to have to reevaluate an organization structure in total, you know, I go back to its measures, its accountability. It's the process and the people. What is that system? You know, because once you do one area, it potentially could throw the entire system off of whatever that process is that we're talking about. So, um, you know, and that's something that's been helpful being the CFO is I'm familiar with it operating in a couple different modes. And so when we do this, we can analyze before we actually execute what are we trying to do. So, you know, the Secretary and the President put together an unbelievable team of professionals that have different experiences. But I would say that if you look at, um, like we've talked about Deputy, uh, Secretary Lawrence, Paul Lawrence over at the va I think the President's done a really good job of putting really good business people in as deputies. I'm not saying I'm good, but I'm just saying if you look at some of the deputy secretaries, you look at Secretary of War. I mean, unbelievable business people. And you know, so we're the guys that kind of stay in the building, heads down. We're not out in the press, we're not doing stuff. We're really focused on trying to make sure we're executing the mission.

Speaker C: I was wondering if you could step, because you kind of alluded to it, but if you could take a minute to just what other high level management challenges are you facing right now and how have you sought to address them?

Speaker B: Um, you know, uh, every day is something new. And I think that, um, probably one of the areas that we've been really kind of focused on, you know, like you talked about the transnational crime and, and determining, you know, the basically foreign entities as being terrorist organizations. You know, we really had to learn how to work across the partnerships with like, Department of Justice and intel and war. But one thing that I've spent a lot of time with is with my counterpart over like a Department of justice with uh, Todd Blanche, who was the Deputy Attorney General and now up for Attorney General. You know, finding a great partnership at that level permeates all the way through the whole organization. And uh, you know, that had been something that I really thought was an important thing. And even at our level, we always come at things at a different view. And I also realized that, you know, I have people all the time within DHS of our 265,000 people are, you know, you also their protector. You know, so you can't just constantly do stuff downs and tell people, hey, this is what we have to do because we need to do it. It's like you need to put together the case and be logical and be respectful and be able to lay this out. So when I talk to someone at my level in the different organizations, I realize they have stakeholders and I think, um, so again, it's a little bit. That's the business side. Uh, there's a lot of policy people and politicals that really are unbelievable in the politics. But my job and a lot of the deputies are about execution and operations and really trying to make sure that that transference of these challenges that you're talking about are handled in a way that people are really encouraged and supported and resourced correctly.

Speaker C: How does U.S. department of Homeland Security, DHS leverage partnerships to achieve its mission? We'll explore this question and so much more when our conversation continues on the Business of Government Hour.

Speaker A: If the 21st century has provided any lessons so far, it is the power of the unexpected. What has been starkly revealed is how systems in place to meet anticipated problems failed when the unanticipated happened. Now, more than ever, government leaders need practical, actionable insights on how to best manage and lead through uncertain, um, and disruptive periods. That's why the IBM center for the Business of Government has published Transforming the Business of Government Insights on Resiliency, Innovation and Performance. Get your copy today. Available on Amazon and with all booksellers. The cascade of catastrophic events and the constancy of uncertainty raises fundamental questions about how governments can anticipate, prepare for and respond to these and other shocks yet to come. That's why the IBM center for the Business of Government has published Transforming the Business of Insights on Resiliency, Innovation and Performance. Edited by Dan Chenock and Michael Keegan. The book offers leaders practical, actionable insights on how best to manage and lead through uncertain, disruptive periods. Get your copy today. Available at Amazon and all booksellers.

Speaker C: Welcome back to the Business of Government Hour. I'm I, Michael Keegan, your host and our guest today is Troy Edgar, Deputy secretary at the U.S. department of Homeland Security. You just mentioned intra governmental partnerships which are essential for you. You talked about your other colleagues in the DEP SEC level, the COO's of other, uh, departments. I'd like to switch gears a bit to private public partnerships, which you've been a champion of. I'm wondering if you could share with us, how are you applying this model? If you are at dhs, what are some of the best ways, the most valuable ways to engage industry and what are some of the limitations you see?

Speaker B: Uh, you know what? I think probably the best example for public private partnerships that I've seen at DHS or in an organization like cisa, um, where you've got an organization that really has to facilitate. Specifically if you look at cisa, um, two big missions, three if you count the contract work that we do to try to make sure that the.gov domain is okay. Uh, but the big focus on their side is looking at cyber. And the second part is the 16 sectors of infrastructure. And so in that infrastructure management sector, the, you know, kind of their second mission there, they have industry relationships with like not only local government, but the industry and they convene discussions to figure out, for example, I'll just use the electrical power sector. So you know, they'll be dealing with the largest power companies, they'll be dealing with local municipalities and trying to figure out what is going on in this industry. How can we all work together, um, you know, as we're kind of going through what are some of the issues. And you know, in that you're also dealing with everything from a major city in, in America to the smallest cities or an Indian reservation. And so again, part of our job with the public and private partnerships is to try and bring the power of that relationship to all levels of government of different sizes, but not so industrial strength to focus so much on big cities that the smaller cities don't get that support and that access to the private industry that they need. That's probably a really good example of us really kind of facilitating the relationships of being able to go through. And I think the other part, like what you're seeing right now is what's uh, happening with A.I.

Speaker C: uh, I mean a great transition to my next because you reiterate and underscore the fact that your job is executing and making sure the department delivers on its uh, missions and you Mentioned AI. I'm wondering if you could share with us, just at your level, technology modernization, whether it's AI, uh, quantum, whatever it is, I'd be interested in getting a sense of your framework, the framework you use to determine where technology investments will have the highest impact for the mission and components you lead.

Speaker B: No, that's a great question. You know, over the last 10 years, I think we've seen a significant change. Um, I would say 10 years ago, just to be fair, it was easy for technology and technology companies to come into government, or even to the Fortune 500, and say, I've got the greatest thing, that I'm going to solve everything. And they would read something in the Wall Street Journal that said, hey, Disney's got three problems, and these companies come in going, hey, I've got something from problem number two, and you just need to buy this, and if you install it, it's F. And that worked, and you saw tech grow. And then I would say that worked there and in government. And then I think industry, like private industry or the Fortune 500, they got smart and really started to mature into not being so fast to jump in federal government. I thought my last tour through the administration, I think, was still having those types of reactions that, let's go after the shiny things. Um, I think what you're seeing in this administration is a lot more level of sophistication. Some of us, like I said, have come in, as, you know, as we talked at the beginning of the show, come in from a tech industry perspective where it's like, first of all, what is the use case? What are the requirements? Um, uh, even at different levels of the organization, some people aren't that technical. There's now enough of a consensus in the way that we've built out the organization that even if somebody's enamored by the shiny thing, there's a way to get everybody on board to how do we go about it? Uh, within dhs, you know, the CIO role, I think we were very selective in working with the president and everybody that we, uh, wanted to make sure that that role wasn't somebody that facilitated industry and was a cheerleader to just bring stuff in. They really were going to focus first on the mission and then look at the requirements and break it backwards. I would say in my role, probably the most important thing is I'm looking for operational outcomes and, and if somebody has ideas or a lot, uh, I see a lot of contracts that come through. The first question I ask is, like, operationally, what's the Business problem. So what are we doing around? And again, go back to a system that you put in place to look at these organizationally, how you set up, what are the processes that you're looking at, what systems and tech, how does this fit into it? And then what are the outcomes that you're actually trying to change? If I spend $90 million on this thing, what specifically is going to be different for us in three years when you do it?

Speaker C: You mentioned earlier, Troy, the importance of the workforce at dhs and the federal government, regardless of department, is going through significant changes, whether it's size, structure, expectations. Um, wondering if you could share with us what's your message to the men and women of DHS about what this moment in terms of transition means for their careers and their men mission.

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, when it comes to the workforce, especially on the career side, it's been a tough slog. You know, I think a lot of career people, you know, uh, again, back in the day, it was very noble to work in the federal government and be, you know, and quote, as a political too, you're doing public service. So, you know, these folks that have been in the government have actually committed themselves to public service and, and in the day, they actually bypass potentially higher salary opportunities, maybe in the private industry. But there was the benefit of you really were doing something special. And I think when we came in, we had to make some dramatic moves at the beginning. And I think now what we're doing kind of in this next phase is we're really having the opportunity to build again what the government workforce will be like as we're starting to now, you know, go through all of the objectives that we've set out. My message to the dhs, um, staff is like, what they're doing matters. Like when they look around and they say, hey, look, you know, first of all, you know, they buy into the mission first and foremost. That's why they're there. Second is like their effort matters no matter what. They're a part of that. And I think, you know, when you look at the things that they're able to achieve, you know, being able to kind of go through and show outcomes and success, I think that's something that we wanted to make sure that they could see that was not infertility. It's something that you're doing this for a cause and this is what it is. So I think for us, the secretary has been very focused on the people side of dhs. He's come in the very beginning. I remember him telling me, troy, I really would like to get out and meet everybody and go to all the headquarters. And my reaction to Secretary Mullen was like sir, you got 250,000, 260,000 people. But his perspective, personality type is one that uh, it's one of his strengths is he, when he's around people, it's contagious. His enthusiasm, his seriousness, his heart, you know, you can tell the type of person he is. So what we've had to work to together is to figure out we really need to make sure that we're empowering our leadership with that same heart, mindset, motivation, encouragement and make sure that they are taking care of their components too. And it's a combination or a partnership of leadership of not only the secretary and myself as one and two being out there and trying to um, make m the promise with the people, but also to make sure that our leaders are carrying that same message through because we need full force multiplication. We can't do it on our. And the secretary, believe me, he's out all the time and so I still think he's going to try to achieve 265, 265,000. But you know, uh, that could be a full time job.

Speaker C: What lies ahead for Homeland Security in an increasingly complex world? We'll explore this question and so much more when our conversation continues on the Business of Government Hour.

Speaker A: The cascade of catastrophic events and the constancy of uncertainty raises fundamental questions about how governments can anticipate, prepare for and respond to these and other shocks yet to come. That's why the IBM center for the Business of Government has published Transforming the Business of Insights on Resiliency, Innovation and Performance, edited by Dan Chenock and Michael Keegan. The book offers leaders practical, actionable insights on how best to manage and lead through uncertain disruptive periods. Get your copy today available at Amazon and all booksellers.

Speaker C: Welcome back to the Business of Government Hour. I'm Michael Keegan, your host and uh, our guest today is Troy Edgar, Deputy secretary at the U.S. department of Homeland Security. DHS was created in the aftermath of September 11th. So 25 years ago was the genesis of the motivation to create the department. I was wondering from your perspective, your second stint into the department, would you kind of assess the department's institutional maturity for me?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, that is an awesome question because I. It's interesting, like historical terms, you know, um, over the weekend I was with the Department of Interior Secretary and Deputy Secretary and you know, very mature area, um, you know, justice, very mature, been there, pros and cons, uh, of that is institutional, um, processes and systems and you know, repeatable but not very changeable. And if the culture has drifted or is different than the current leaders want it to be very hard to change a direction within DHS. It's still a newborn, it's 25 years old. And I think what's happened, um, with a good thing is it's like you could still form it a bit. I guess the only thing I would say to somebody that would take over my job when I left is um, I don't think, I think we're not in the process right now anymore with DHS of building the organization. We need to focus on optimizing what it is. And so from my view, when you get people that start, that want to come in and then they're leaders and some of us look at us, we're only going to be here for one to four years, um, you want to make your mark, but you also want to make sure you're supporting the President's agenda. It's easy to look at your four years is what can I get done for the President and move on. I look at things a little bit differently as I think as the Deputy Secretary you're the institutional person that needs to be kind of responsible too for what are you leaving behind. And I think that is a little bit sometimes at cross purposes because we are in such a priority focus. So trying to answer your question directly on DHS is, you know, you could say it's a work in process. But I think the work in process now is we're in the optimization mode, not the build it out mode. And if anything, uh, I look at sometimes we have too many scopes and we need to evaluate. And that's why I think the DOGE thing was very healthy is it forces us to break down doing stuff just because we thought we needed to do it. It's like do we actually legally need to do it? And if we don't and it doesn't complement the mission at the highest level and support the President's agenda and the longer term viability of that organization, we should make the hard decisions. And that's something under this administration been just refreshing is having the opportunity and really the ability at this role, at this level to make those choices with the Secretary has been unbelievable as a

Speaker C: follow up to that. And I understand your job is to execute on the priorities that the current administration has. But when you look at your second tour duty at dhs, what do you think the future, maybe the two or three most consequential challenges it's dealing with in the future. What do you think it's going to be, if you could venture a guess?

Speaker B: Um, I think, um, one of the hard ones, I'm not going to put it in an order list. So I'm mentioning this just because even coming in here, I was dealing with something in here. But I think when you look at the organization and you see the threat profile and the things that are out there and you realize we are the largest national security law enforcement part of the federal government, you are managing a portfolio of things that needs to do many things. And it's easy to get focused on one thing or the other and lose focus. Focus or pick a favorite or pick something that you're familiar with. Um, I look at, you know, the Coast Guard as an area that it's going to be interesting. You know, if you look at the Coast Guard, just to pick up on what you mentioned earlier, they put together a Force Design 2028, um, that was to complement the $25 billion of recapitalization that they got in Big, beautiful build. The largest recapitalization Coast Guard has ever had. But the downside of the that is there's a higher expectations of what they'll do and after this recapitalization's done. The recapitalization didn't necessarily provide a year on year increases to their budget for the people required to drive those boats, to fly those planes, to fly the helicopters. It didn't provide all the infrastructure needed to put docks in place and ports in place. So a big part of the responsibility, and you could use Coast Guard as an example, but I can give you five examples of the same model, but let's just exploit this one. Our responsibility for the next two and a half years is to work closely with the President through uh, OMB for budgeting and with the Hill and decide we've started something here that we're going to have to sustain forever. And so how are we going to manage the whole portfolio knowing we're creating something that's bigger, that's going to be harder to maintain when after all this money's flexed down, not just for the Coast Guard, but in total, we're never going to see this time again. And so we, you know, part of the responsibility that we have in uh, our leaderships are we need to take a look at the sustainability and actually make hard decisions now before they come super hard in two and a half years. And uh, I think that's something that's been probably one of the most Challenging things because people, you know, we're riding high in the hog right now. We're well resourced, but we still need to be diligent on the decisions we make and we still need to be contemplative, contemplating where will we be in 2030?

Speaker C: Well, the beautiful part about what you just shared is the continuity of what you're doing. You actually sustain that, as you said earlier, by making these hard decisions. Now I think about your career for students of public management or aspiring government leaders like yourself, when you were. What does your career teach those who may be listening about the value, Troy, of moving across sector years?

Speaker B: Um, you know, I have three boys and uh, they're all at different levels of professionalism. You know, I've got a comedian, I've got ah, ah, somebody that's in the consulting side and I've got a, a child that's at Wharton and MBA school, you know, so I think about what you're talking about pretty frequently. And you know, the thing that I, I would tell people that are early on in their career is I think you need to decide a little bit that if you want to get to a certain point in your career, like what we're talking about now and you find this exciting, you're going to have to make a decision 20 years prior that I'm going to do multiple things at a time. I'm going to sacrifice my quality of life for where I might be down the road. So, you know, 20 years ago I was, uh, running two or three companies I'd started, I was on the city council, I was a mayor, I was coaching sports, you know, and, and I really wasn't doing stuff necessarily that I wanted to do where I could relax. So a lot of that was a blur, you know, But I kept looking 20 years ahead going, hey, where do I want to be? I need to get through these things. So early on, if you're early in your career, you should just decide. Um, I wouldn't say just decide. You should really contemplate. And I used to do it every year at Christmas when there was a shutdown of whatever job I had, I would go off by myself for two or three days. And I think, you know, what did I achieve this last year? What do I want to achieve the next year? But eventually 20 of those times go by and you are either where you want to be or you're not. And so I think, you know, I would just say what I've been blessed with, and that's what my podcast did, is I really was Trying to show, look, a meritocracy or merit is something that you either achieve with hard work, opportunity and preparation and you take advantage of it, or if you consciously decide that, hey, you know what, that's a little too much, or, hey, my family's just not. I mean, I've been blessed. I've had a family that's been supportive. Because think about it. I mean, it definitely. It's not just me. I spent four years here with IBM while my wife was in California. And so she's 100% on board. Uh, my kids, you know, there was a lot of sacrifice. So I think it's something you have to decide early on.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great insight. So, as we close, um, I'd love to get your perspective. What do you want, um, most for the American public who's listening to understand about what dhs, uh, does and what it takes to do it?

Speaker B: Well, I think a lot of people in America don't realize how much they actually deal with dhs. And so, you know, if you think about it, you get on a plane, you go through tsa and you get on the plane, you, uh, go overseas or somewhere. When you land, you go through customs, right? And you, you know, as you're coming back into the country, uh, you know, if you're out on your boat or wherever or you're on a cruise, you're dealing with the Coast Guard and the maritime time. If you just kind of keep on going through, when you're logging on and you're seeing, uh, what's going on on the Internet and you log on to your bank and you see your bank balance and you're thinking, wow, I hope I don't get hacked. You've got CISA out there doing cyber attack evaluations and making sure and all that. And you can go on and on and just realize that basically those 265,000 people of DHS are doing a tremendous service, not only for America, but for globally. I would subscribe to. And, um, you know, and so I think that, you know, where I would leave, you know, the listeners and for people at DHS is just an unbelievable mission. And it's really critical. You know, when we did not get paid for unbelievable, long amounts of time because of the, uh, political backs and forth, a lot of these people were living in their car. You know, they were, you know, they weren't able to make ends meet because they weren't able to get paid. You had Coast Guard people, you know, the Coast Guard people, they're out on shifts and their families are at home. They're not able to go work for Uber or do nighttime. So I think, you know, one of the things that's been, you know, that you, uh, know we just say the message out to America is like, DHS definitely their mission is not something you could kind of turn off at night or close something and say, hey, we're just not going to do it. It has to be done. So it's a zero fail mission. So I just, I think with the people, it's been a blessing to, you know, be part of the leadership. And I would just say, you, uh, know America. When they see these people at dhs, I'm hoping that they'll kind of get a different perspect, not people that want to abolish ICE or do all these different things. It's like, look, these people are just doing the job that they signed up to do to enforce the laws that they were required to enforce. And as the Secretary always says, and I don't want to be political on this show, but they're not picking and choosing. They're just doing what they've been told to do. Um, and they've done a great job. I'm very proud to be in the leadership of it.

Speaker C: I want to thank you, Troy, personally, for taking time out of your busy schedule to today to come and talk to me again. It's great to have you back, but more importantly, I want to thank you for your dedicated service to the country.

Speaker B: Thank you, Miklon. I appreciate you having me on the show. Appreciate it.

Speaker C: This has been the Business of Government Hour, a conversation with Troy Edgar, Deputy secretary of the U.S. department of Homeland Security. Be sure to join us next time for another informative, insightful and in depth conversation on improving government leadership and its effectiveness. Until then, subscribe, download and listen to the entire interview at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, or on your favorite podcast app. And as always, @businessofgovernment.org for the business of Government Hour. I'm Michael Keegan and thanks for joining us.