The prototype border security project that the Homeland Security Department accepted last week lacks the operational capabilities that DHS had hoped it would have. As a result, the department has extended the time frame for the first phase of SBInet by three years, government auditors said.
DHS accepted Boeing’s system of cameras, sensors, towers and software to secure a 28-mile stretch of the Arizona border last week under the assumptions that the system was a value-add and a building block. Lawmakers of both parties have said they thought Project 28 would meet the overall operational goals of SBInet, DHS’ multiyear, multibillion-dollar effort to use technology and infrastructure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lawmakers were also angry that Customs and Border Protection had extended the schedule for implementing the first phase of SBInet technology by three years, until the end of 2011.
Project 28 was expected to be operational early last summer, but software integration problems delayed it. Lawmakers have questioned if the decision to accept the system in its current form was the result of diminishing expectations.
“It’s not really what they had envisioned,” Richard Stana, director of homeland security and justice at the Government Accountability Office, said at today’s joint hearing on SBInet by two subcommittees of House Homeland Security Committee.
Although testing is not complete, Project 28’s ability to detect intrusions is expected to be lower than the rate of 95 percent, plus or minus 5 percent, that DHS wants.
“After so many years of promises and testing and millions of dollars spent, we are no closer to a technology solution for really securing the border,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). “This is unacceptable, unacceptable – it’s what’s holding up comprehensive immigration reform.”
Jayson Ahern, CBP’s deputy commissioner, said at the hearing that technology and Project 28 were never meant to be the only solution to providing border security.
However, lawmakers said they were told that Project 28 was going to be an operational prototype. They are concerned that CBP now plans to use a new common operating picture system, which Boeing was chosen to develop under a separate $64 million task order in December. That system would replace much of the equipment developed under Project 28.
“The administration does not understand that this issue is on fire across the country,” said Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), ranking minority member of the Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism Subcommittee, one of the subcommittees that held the hearing. “It wasn’t us who made Project 28 a big deal. It was [DHS] Secretary [Michael] Chertoff.”
Digg
De.licio.us
Slashdot
Technorati
