Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. Aug. 4, 2006, to correct that Clark Kent Ervin is a former Homeland Security Department inspector general, not a former procurement official at the company.

Top purchasing officials at the Homeland Security Department went before the House Government Reform Committee today to try to explain a newly released committee report that pinpoints numerous problems in DHS’ procurement and contracting procedures.

The report, prepared by committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), identified 32 DHS contracts worth $34.3 billion that involved “significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement.”

Davis described DHS’ purchasing system as acquisition dysfunction.

The report found that procurement spending at DHS has increased 189 percent since the founding of the agency, rising from 14,000 contracts valued at $3.5 billion in 2003 to 63,000 contracts worth $10 billion by 2005. That increase was 11 times faster than the remainder of federal discretionary spending, the report states.

Moreover, sole-source and limited competition contracts have grown even faster than overall DHS procurement spending and have been accompanied by pervasive mismanagement, the report states.

The report shows a pattern of reckless spending at DHS that included several billion dollars spent on airport screening equipment and port facilities radiation-detection systems that did not work, and a $400 million Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System border security monitoring system whose cameras shut down in inclement weather, Waxman said.

The report criticizes the $10 billion contract awarded to Accenture to implement the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program to amass data on foreign visitors. The committee found the system relies on out-of-date and ineffective technologies, the report states. Even if US-VISIT worked properly, it might not prove to be an efficient or effective border security system, the committee said.

The report also focused on the Transportation Security Agency’s $1 billion contract with Unisys to upgrade airport computer networks. By September 2005, less than halfway through the contract period, TSA had spent 80 percent of the contract.