U.S. Department of Homeland Security

In 2003, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was formed in response to the 9-11 attacks, which, in terms of visibility, made counterterrorism its highest priority. Nevertheless, it did consolidate organizations with overlapping functions, especially in border security. It made a permanent home for some agencies that had been operating on an ad hoc basis, such as the Transportation Security Administration responsible for airline security. In other areas, such as national-level disaster response, it has not responded as well as in past situations where independent agencies handled incident response at the national level.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was previously an independent agency, became part of DHS. As a result of after-action review of the FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina,  President George W. Bush signed the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act. This reorganized FEMA, and gave it more resources and responsibilities within DHS, becoming effective on December 31, 2007.

Formation and consolidations
While an Office of the Secretary was formed, most of DHS came from other government departments.