Federal Protective Service (FPS) - Research Paper Example

Today, the question that remains is whether the DHS has served its role by ensuring high security standards, or if it has failed to perform its role as a security body (Haulley, 2005). The Federal Protective Services (FPS) is under the DHS, and serves the purpose of providing security and services of law enforcement to the federal buildings, property, facilities, and other state assets. In order to serve this purpose, FPS has a mission statement that emphasizes their purpose and objectives, which are mainly concerned with security.

FPS has therefore, employed close to 1,300 employees. These comprise of police officers, criminal investigators, support personnel, and law enforcement security officers. In addition, FPS has contracted approximately 15,000 security guards, who are in charge of the security of more than 9,000 buildings and their occupants (Haulley, 2005). In order to offer protection and security to federal facilities and personnel, FPS employs a variety of security measures, found in its physical security program.

These include installation of magnetometers, alarm systems, as well as entry control systems, which are operational in federal buildings every day. In addition, the FPS provides uniformed police response to security concerns, and provides follow-ups on such concerns through further investigations. Different seminars on crime prevention are offered to a variety of agencies by the FPS, depending on their organizational needs. FPS has hoped that all these will propel it to becoming a world-class security agency (Goldstein, 2009).

In providing buildings security and protection of other critical infrastructure, the FPS uses strategies that enable detection, deterrence, disruption, and investigation of threats using authorities concerned with law enforcement. Additionally, FPS mainly relies on its risk management program, which is supposed to be set to the standards of Interagency Security Committee and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. Additionally, FPS ensures effective communication and coordination among its law enforcement personnel, by using the MegaCenter, its central communication point (Goldstein, 2009).

Although the FPS works to ensure the security of federal buildings, it has not come up with comprehensive measures to address the security concerns in these buildings. For instance, the software FPS has adopted for security inspections is ineffective in achieving high security standards. The Modified Infrastructure Survey Tool (Mist) is a security software that FPS used to inspect federal buildings and expose any security threats. This included simplistic tests, which were then uploaded in a centralized database, after recommendations from the software.

This software was unreliable, as it did not allow for comparison of security risks, between different federal buildings. Additionally, this software cannot address terrorism threats, since it lacks the capability to factor their potential consequences (Goldstein, 2009). Apart from Mist, the FPS developed another system called the Risk Assessment and Management Program (Ramp), which would be used to test federal buildings for security threats, but equally failed. In its initial use, this software caused the mysterious loss of recorded inspections from its database.

In addition, ramp could not connect to its servers in remote areas. Therefore, the inspectors lacked a way of ensuring that the