Streamlining and consolidating Congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security was one of the major recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, yet almost a decade after the commission’s report, “More than 100 congressional committees and subcommittees currently claim jurisdiction over it” causing a “patchwork system of supervision [that] results in near-paralysis and a lack of real accountability,” the chairs of the 9/11 Commission said today.

The end result: “Our country is still not as safe as it could and should be,” Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean declare in a New York Times Op-ed piece today labelled “Homeland Confusion.”

The column is timed to today’s release of a report by a task force empaneled by The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands and the Aspen Institute’s Justice & Society Program; Hamilton and Kean served on that committee. (Read the report below). The report sets out why it’s important to consolidate a congressional system in which 100 committees and subcommittees now have jurisdiction over pieces of the department. The graphic below, from the report, gives you an idea of the very large number of Congressional touchpoints. (Click image for larger version).