Highway Infrastructure: Federal Efforts to Strengthen Security Should Be Better Coordinated and Targeted on the Nation's Most Critical Highway Infrastructure

摘要

The nation's highway transportation system is vast and open--vehicles and their operators can move freely and with almost no restrictions. Securing the U.S. highway infrastructure system is a responsibility shared by federal, state and local government, and the private sector. Within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has primary responsibility for ensuring the security of the sector. GAO was asked to assess the progress DHS has made in securing the nation's highway infrastructure. This report addresses the extent to which federal entities have conducted and coordinated risk assessments; DHS has developed a risk-based strategy; and stakeholders, such as state and local transportation entities, have taken voluntary actions to secure highway infrastructure--and the degree to which DHS has monitored such actions. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed risk assessment results and TSA's documented security strategy, and conducted interviews with highway stakeholders. Federal entities have several efforts underway to assess threat, vulnerability, and consequence--the three elements of risk--for highway infrastructure; however, these efforts have not been systematically coordinated among key federal partners and the results are not routinely shared.