Now that Republicans will hold the U.S. Senate and House, the odds increase dramatically that Congress will quickly establish a Department of Homeland Security. That would spark some immediate IT spending as the new organization tries to unite 170,000 employees from 22 agencies.

The department's top IT spending priorities would include creating a single E-mail directory so new colleagues can begin collaborating and Web portals for department leaders to communicate internally, says Homeland Security Office CIO Steve Cooper. "Things can be done with IT to help the new organization brand itself as a single, stronger entity," Cooper said last week at an Industry Advisory Council conference.

Those are vital steps, says conference attendee Charles Gerhards, Pennsylvania's CIO. But he says the department should also quickly establish an external portal to communicate with those beyond its wall, like state and local agencies.

Another top priority for the department: funding programs to harmonize back-office IT functions in all the merged agencies, says Rose Parkes, CIO of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is slated to join Homeland Security.

It could take five to 10 years before the merger of 22 federal agencies is complete, says James Champy, chairman of Perot Systems' consulting practice and author of "X-Engineering The Corporation" (Warner Business Books, 2002). He predicts some meaningful results within a year or two, but the merger's complexity means Homeland Security leaders should focus on a limited number of changes and hope those successes pull the rest of the organization with them.