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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Virtual Border Fence Still Just...Virtual
Yesterday I ripped into folks over at the Professional Services Council (a contractor front group) for implying that current contracting woes had nothing to do with the contractors themselves. Then this morning I come across an update on the SBInet program - which is supposed to establish a virtual fence along the southern border of the United States to monitor illegal crossings. The program continues to be behind schedule and over budget. Big surprise.
We blogged back in April about how the program was behind schedule and over budget, citing two other reports from June 2007 and February 2008 that showed the program was not going well. In fact, the Customs and Border Protection office decided to scrap a part of the program being handled by Boeing called Project 28 after $20 million had been spent on a system that didn't work.
The House Homeland Security committee held a hearing yesterday to explore why the virtual border fence has not become a reality. Two representatives from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified that the SBInet program is pretty much a disaster. From GAO director of information technology architecture and system issues Randolph Hite's testimony:
Important aspects of SBInet remain ambiguous and in a continued state of flux, making it unclear and uncertain what technology capabilities will be delivered and when, where, and how they will be delivered. For example, the scope and timing of planned SBInet deployments and capabilities have continued to be delayed without becoming more specific.
Ouch. Not a lot of grey area there. GAO's Richard Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues, also testified that time lines for the program had slipped, in some cases by up to three years, and the cost of the pedestrian fence has increased from about $4 million per mile to $7.5 million per mile! Wow! Now that's what I call wasteful spending.
Posted by Adam Hughes
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