§187 Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency

Summary

Creates the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) and a fund to pay for homeland security research. HSARPA is run by a Director picked by the Secretary who reports to the Under Secretary. The Director gives out competitive grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts to businesses, research centers, and universities. The money supports basic and applied work to create big advances in security technology, speed up development, testing, and deployment of important tools, build prototypes to fix security gaps, and improve technology for investigating child exploitation crimes and advanced forensics. The Director can ask for proposals on specific problems, must coordinate with other research agencies and can run joint projects, and will hold periodic technology demonstrations. The Secretary may hire staff using the special hiring rules in section 1101 of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 (5 U.S.C. 3104 note; Public Law 105–261), with appointments not to exceed 5 years before any extension. Also creates the Acceleration Fund, run by the HSARPA Director. Congress authorized $500,000,000 for fiscal year 2003 and whatever sums are needed after that. At least 10 percent of each year’s funds through fiscal year 2005 must be set aside for the Under Secretary, working with the Coast Guard Commandant, to develop better ports, waterways, and coastal security surveillance and perimeter protection so Coast Guard cutters, aircraft, helicopters, and personnel are less likely to be pulled from other missions. Defines four terms: Fund (the Acceleration Fund), homeland security research (research about detecting, stopping, protecting against, responding to, and recovering from security threats), HSARPA (the agency), and Under Secretary (the Under Secretary for Science and Technology).