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Homeland Security: TOM RIDGE

TOM RIDGE

Secretary

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The challenges facing the Homeland Security Department's secretary continue to be tougher than those confronting any of his Cabinet colleagues.Tom Ridge must get employees pulled from 22 other federal departments and agencies to work together-while

focusing on threats to the nation. "This reorganization of government has presented the biggest'change-management' challenge of all time," Ridge said in a November 2003 speech.

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Everyone agrees that the new department must resist becoming preoccupied with its own organizational issues and instead focus on learning to work with an even larger community-especially intelligence agencies, state and local governments, and Erst responders at all levels of government. Uy all accounts, IDHS is making progress. The department's distribution of nearly $9 billion in longawaited grants to state and local agencies has quieted some critics in those quarters.

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