MEASURING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR HOMELAND SECURITY: AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION AND THREAT MITIGATION (2010–PRESENT)

This research empirically examined the effectiveness of the National Strategy for Homeland Security (NSHS) 2010 to 2025 assessing the correlation between federal resource allocation and tangible threat-mitigation results. Using a longitudinal mixed-methods design, the study synthesizes and analyzes data from the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP), State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) and Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), and threat indicators from DHS, FEMA, and GAO performance reports. The results highlight a statistically significant impact of risk-informed allocations on the decreases in terrorism and cyber incidents, and disruptions to critical infrastructure. The allocations made to cybersecurity demonstrate the strongest inverse relationship to reported threats, affirming the strategic focus on the cyber domain of resilience. Further efficiency analysis indicates jurisdictions with enhanced interagency collaboration and coordination achieved substantially greater operational performance and capability gains. The results support the risk management and systems theory, affirming that adaptive, data-driven governance improves the efficiency of homeland security. To advance preparedness for the period of 2025–2030, policy recommendations focus on AI-powered risk analytics, performance metric standardization, and cyber-resilience frameworks.