System showing promise despite flaws, but Napolitano's review may call for funding proven technologies
If the virtual fence project at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could testify at its own congressional hearing, it may well choose to paraphrase Mark Twain and say, "Recurring reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."
Witnesses told a Thursday hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee that the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) program, which has struggled to meet deadlines and to produce working solutions, was adding capabilities and correcting errors despite diverging from its original projections.
As Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the committee, noted, DHS hoped to deploy SBInet along the entire southwest border by 2008 at a cost of about $2 billion.
Today, DHS has spent roughly $800 million on the program and has covered only 23 miles rather than 2,000. The latest schedule from DHS estimates a completion date of 2016 for rolling out the system to the entire southwest border if no other problems arise and if Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano endorses that course of action.
Napolitano announced a review of the program in January and on Tuesday froze funding for it outside of the initial 53-mile increment being stood up in two legs outside of Tucson and Ajo, Ariz.
So SBInet is racing to prove its worth. US Border Patrol is scheduled to receive the already completed 23-mile leg known as Tucson 1 for operational testing by Sept. 15. The following leg, known as Ajo 1, should be built by mid-August and turned over to the Border Patrol sometime in November, by the latest schedule.
But Napolitano's review, initially suggested as a five-week examination of the program, has turned into a larger mechanism to provide input into future budget planning decisions. Under the review, DHS is weighing whether to spend more money on SBInet or to invest those funds into proven, rapidly deployable technologies, testified SBInet Executive Director Mark Borkowksi.
Still, a video presented by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) of SBInet's video capabilities seemed to impress everyone. Recorded in February, the video shows six trespassers into the United States effectively tracked and stopped by US Border Patrol agents. Using the system, agents in a Tucson command and control center where able to guide agents in the field and inform them of possible threats before they were physically encountered.
"That opportunity to see the whole area at once in one place and the ability to allocate resources to deal with four or five things at one time looks like it could be very significant," Borkowski said of the demonstration.
Border Patrol agents have been effectively using the Tucson 1 system since Feb. 6, largely at night when engineers are not working on it. Feedback on the system has been overwhelmingly positive, agreed Borkowski and Acting Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher
Challenges and delays
The extensive delays that have occurred in the implementation of SBInet to date have largely been the result of a lack of systems engineering expertise in both DHS acquisition offices and the SBInet program office, Borkowski stated.
Borkowski's tenure as manager of the program has centered on identifying flawed engineering processes and fixing them while building the competencies to oversee a large contracting project and a systems engineering development program.
Systems engineering competency "is a critical function and the lack of that function is often the cause of the kind of problems we have been seeing in the program," Borkowski told the joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counter-Terrorism and the Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight.
Even Randolph Hite, director of IT Architecture and Systems Issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), agreed with Borkowski's assessment.
Hite, who was particularly critical of Boeing's performance in the program, accused managers of underestimating the size and complexity of SBInet and driving it by a predefined schedule, thereby bypassing critical processes for the sake of time.
"I see that changing now," Hite acknowledged, indicating that Borkowski had instilled some much needed rigor into the program.
Hite presented to Congress a GAO report, Secure Border Initiative: DHS Needs to Address Testing and Performance Limitations That Place Key Technology Program at Risk, detailing how the SBInet program office identified 1,300 flaws, large and small, in the program from March 2008 through July 2009.
Hite condemned the testing procedures for identifying and fixing these flaws, saying that they were often changed "on the fly."
"SBInet test procedures were generally not executed as written," Hite said in his written testimony. "Specifically, about 70 percent of the procedures for key test events were rewritten extemporaneously during execution because persons conducting the tests determined that the approved procedures were not sufficient or accurate.
"Moreover, changes to these procedures were not made according to a documented quality assurance process but were instead made based on an undocumented understanding that program officials said they established with the contractor," he added. "While some of these changes were relatively minor, others were significant, such as adding requirements or completely rewriting verification steps."
The high number of those changes presents a significantly increased risk that problems with SBInet would not be discovered until later in testing, Hite warned. In April 2009, the SBInet program office wrote to The Boeing Co., SBInet chief contractor, to caution that changes in system qualification tests appeared to be implemented to "pass the test" only rather than to prove qualification of the system.
"Testing is not a one-time event; It is a series of incrementally expansive test events that build on each other and complement previous test events," Hite commented, then added: "The purpose of testing is not to demonstrate the absence of problems; it's to find problems."
Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems, said DHS and Boeing were concerned about missed deadlines and escalating costs. Boeing would seek opportunities to control costs and adhere to future schedules, he said.
"Based on where we are today in the program, the progress is evident. We are not seeing any system-wide issues; we have plans in place for the remaining lower-level issues and we are confident we have a robust system acceptance test plan with well understood success criteria," Krone stated.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and other members of Congress present voiced high interest in using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to supplement and augment SBInet.
The SBInet review being conducted by Napolitano would address issues such as the use of UAVs and other technologies to supplement or even replace SBInet, Borkowski said.
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