Fusion Centers: Issues and Options for Congress

Fusion centers are state-created entities largely financed and staffed by the states, and there is no one model for how a center should be structured. State and local law enforcement and criminal intelligence seem to be at the core of many of the centers. Although many of the centers initially had purely counterterrorism goals, for numerous reasons, they have increasingly gravitated toward an all-crimes and even broader all-hazards approach. While many of the centers have prevention of attacks as a high priority, little true fusion, or analysis of disparate data sources, identification of intelligence gaps, and pro-active collection of intelligence against those gaps which could contribute to prevention is occurring. Some centers are collocated with local offices of federal entities, yet in the absence of a functioning intelligence cycle process, collocation alone does not constitute fusion. The federal role in supporting fusion centers consists largely of providing financial assistance, the majority of which has flowed through the Homeland Security Grant Program sponsoring security clearances providing human resources producing some fusion center guidance and training and providing congressional authorization and appropriation of national foreign intelligence program resources, as well as oversight hearings. This report includes over 30 options for congressional consideration to clarify and potentially enhance the federal governments relationship with fusion centers. One of the central options is the potential drafting of a formal national fusion center strategy that would outline, among other elements, the federal governments clear expectations of fusion centers, its position on sustainment funding, metrics for assessing fusion center performance, and definition of what constitutes a mature fusion center. This report will be updated.