§187 Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency

Summary

Create the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (called HSARPA) and set up a fund to pay for homeland security research. The law defines a few words: Fund means the Acceleration Fund for Research and Development of Homeland Security Technologies; homeland security research means work on detecting, preventing, protecting against, responding to, finding the cause of, and recovering from homeland security threats (especially terrorism); HSARPA is the agency created here; Under Secretary means the Under Secretary for Science and Technology. HSARPA must have a Director picked by the Secretary who reports to the Under Secretary. The Director will run the Fund and give out competitive, reviewed grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts to businesses, government-funded research centers, universities, and others. The Fund supports basic and applied research to spur big technology advances, moves critical technologies through development, testing, and deployment, speeds prototyping to fix security weaknesses, and funds research to help investigate child exploitation crimes (including child victim identification, trafficking in persons, and child pornography) and advanced forensics. The Director can ask for proposals on specific problems, must coordinate with other research agencies, may run joint projects, and will hold technology demonstrations sometimes. The Secretary may use special hiring powers from a 1999 law, and certain employee appointments can’t exceed 5 years before any extension. The Fund got $500,000,000 for fiscal year 2003 and whatever money is needed after that. At least 10% of each year’s money through fiscal year 2005 must go to the Under Secretary, working with the Coast Guard, for ports, waterways, and coastal security research to avoid diverting Coast Guard cutters, aircraft, helicopters, and personnel from other missions.