A year after the largest and most costly revamp in US government history forged the Department of Homeland Security, some security problems are worse than before the agency was created, according to a new study.

The report published this week by the left-leaning Century Foundation said the main areas of backsliding included air cargo and private airplane security, backlogs in immigration cases, allocation of funds and co-ordination within government to develop clear policy goals.

While the study said the revamp involving 22 agencies and more than 170,000 employees had paid off in part, it noted: "The areas needing the most improvement deal with the very coordination problems that the department was created to solve. In some of those areas, conditions are worse than before DHS was created."

"We gave it a C+, which is some progress, but it still needs substantial improvement. We all expect and hope that the department is going to do a significantly better job at coordinating the government strategies," Donald Kettl, lead author of the study, said Friday.

"More of the same isn't going to get us where we need to go," he said.

The study reinforces criticism from others inside and outside the government who fear the homeland security reorganization has created a lumbering bureaucracy rather than a cohesive entity that can markedly reduce the risks of terrorist attacks.

US officials say the country is safer today than before the September 11 attacks and that tighter security is working and preventing or discouraging more serious crimes or attacks.

The Century Foundation study said the department had done well in some areas including tracking foreign students, hiring travel checkpoint screeners, adding more air marshals on planes and launching a center which integrates information on critical infrastructure, such as roads and bridges.

It said the best performance was seen in areas already working well before the creation of the department.

"On the other hand, big vulnerabilities remain in container shipping, on general (private) aviation and on control of many border crossings," Kettl said.

Other problems include intelligence gathering and coordination at a federal and local level.

Kettl said DHS and the 13 congressional committees and more than 60 subcommittees dealing with homeland security issues ran the risk of playing yesterday's ballgame unless the department devised a sophisticated, forward-looking strategy.

"This is a problem that's going to require a flexible, and very lithe government response... Thinking that somehow moving these agencies around and putting them under one letterhead is going to solve the problem simply is not going to get the job done," he said.

(Reuters)