On January 24, 2003, the United States Department of Homeland Security began its operations. The introduction of this ministry into the US government represented the most significant organizational change in the US federal structure in the last fifty years. As many as twenty federal agencies have been transferred to the new ministry, including the famous Secret Service, which is responsible for securing the US president and other senior officials. The Secret Service was previously part of the United States Department of Treasury. Officially, the Ministry was established in response to the growing threat of terrorist attacks.
The Department of Homeland Security is now third in the US in numbers (ahead of only the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs). With an approved budget of about $ 40 billion a year, the Department of Homeland Security exceeds the budgets of many countries in the world.
Tom Ridge, a Republican and former governor of Pennsylvania, became the first Homeland Security Minister. It is very interesting that the US Department of Homeland Security is in some way accountable to the interior ministries of other countries. On the other hand, there is a ministry in the US called the United States Department of the Interior, but it deals with significantly different matters (administration of property owned by the US federal government, etc.).
